that's news to the rest of us... they'd all have to petition to move up AA. Why bother?

what will o'hara and malvern look like next year? have they picked up any new players yet?

AllorNothing, All the players mentioned played for Tennent except Horrox.

quote:

Originally posted by CarlWood:
that's news to the rest of us... they'd all have to petition to move up AA. Why bother?

That's just what i heard. Does anything with school size matter?

Hey Carl,

Are those WC schools sandbagging again this year? They're closer in size to the D'town schools than the rest of that list at 'A'. I guess having our 'AA' schools play 'A' will give our FC champion a decent shot at winning the state title against the western PA school (with less than half the student population). What gives. Someone please tell us what the criteria is for the levels, instead of some backroom contingency deciding who plays at what level based on personal biases. If it's going by school population, then where are the population cutoffs for each level. Also, are we in the east finally going to come into alignment with the size designations with the schools in the west. Last year's explanation was that they wanted an even distribution of teams at each level, thus the huge dicrepencies of school size for the state title at the 'A' level. I think perhaps the west should increase the size of school for their 'A' level, then everything would be uniform across the state.

Actually, the Downingtown HS are much bigger. Here are the official PIAA boys sizes for 2006-2008 (they are up on the PIAA web site as well as sizes for the PCL schools except O'Hara and Judge):

AA Downingtown West 746
AA Downingtown East 718
AA Haverford High 654
AA cutoff 650 ----
WC East 615
WC Henderson 592
WC Rustin 337

The A/AA cutoff was 650 for public schools last year (200 for Privates), and I expect it to remain there. Privates 200-399 were allowed to play AA last year; 400+ were required to be AAA. That created 50 AA schools, 61 A schools--many of them small CPIHL Tier II schools with no real chance at Flyers Cup consideration.

The latest Flyers Cup meeting (May 15) consensus was to leave last year's brackets in place. Come the 2008-2009 season, we will have 1) new PIAA enrollments (expect Downingtown schools to continue to grow 15%/year, expect WC schools to grow at a slower rate except Rustin, which will "fill"); 2) full PIAA membership and compliance experience for PCL schools. At that point the debate about restructuring the Flyers Cup classes can really explode.

There are some earlier threads here about size-based classes, including combining east/west schools into a single class structure. There's a lot more issues to that than simply the "championship" playoffs, as the PIHL uses their familiar WPIAL model of "Size Class = Schedule", while in the east we have mixed size scheduling for HS sports. There are also many more really big HS in eastern PA (e.g., North Penn 1746) that make the state-wide size classifications interesting.

quote:

What gives. Someone please tell us what the criteria is for the levels, instead of some backroom contingency deciding who plays at what level based on personal biases.

This is certainly not the case. The size of school model has been in place for three years and schools that are eligible for the Flyers Cup (based on size) have been published in Breakaway every year, very early in the season.

I love when they get Carl started.

How does he know all this stuff!?

He carries a crystal ball.

What is Bayard Rustin's coach, Nick Russo's playing background? I'm just curious.

He played juniors in canada as a kid. When he was younger they didnt have juniors in Canada. He has been everywhere in hockey from youth through professional but now focuses more on youth hockey. He recently coached at Neumann College too but didnt coach the past year or two.

I ment to say..they didnt have juniors in the US

What team? I have looked all over and can't find anything on him.

quote:

Originally posted by GSPOT:
AllorNothing, All the players mentioned played for Tennent except Horrox.

Thats really surprising but I guess we'll see what happens in the season.