Area softball coaches react to change in playoff format

By Jeremy Wise

Published: July 25, 2008

In years past, a team that won a softball area tournament got to host the first round of the sub-state playoffs.

Starting next year, sub-state rounds will be gone as the Alabama High School Athletic Association changed the playoff format recently.

Instead of two sub-state rounds before the state tournament play at school’s home sites, the AHSAA has adopted for softball a similar playoff format to the one it uses in basketball.

Thirty-two teams, area winners and runners-up, will make the playoffs as they have in the past.

Instead of hosting (winners) or traveling (runners-up) first round matchups, teams will travel to one of four regional sites for a tournament.

The champion and runner-up from each regional advances to the state tournament.

According to Steve Savarese, the move allows college coaches a better chance to recruit talent, he said in an AH-SAA press release.

It also helps in travel, he said.

Area coaches agree the reduced travel is a benefit.

“The biggest thing is travel,” said Enterprise Wildcats head coach, whose team traveled all the way to Satsuma for a playoff series last year.

Thompson said under the current format, he would have traveled to Montgomery.

“It’s the regional site your closest to,” he said.

For 2009, sites are Gulf Shores, Montgomery, Huntsville and Birmingham.

New Brockton High School head coach Jaime Carruthers said she also sees the travel benefit.

“Especially with the price of gas,” she said.

Both Thompson and Carruthers are cautiously optimistic about the change.

“I really don’t think it’ll be much different. I want to play a year and see how it goes,” he said. “I like the idea of one central site.”

“I think it’s interesting. You can be playing really well one weekend (and make the state tournament,” Carruthers said, adding the downside is if you have a bad weekend, you can be eliminated.

“It becomes a do-or-die situation,” she said.

Carruthers said she also would like to see how the regionals would be drawn and how the scheduling will be.

Carruthers said the tournament is scheduled to be play on a weekend, eliminating time missed from school.

Carruthers, though, wonders what will happen if the tournament is rained out.

The regional is also scheduled to be a full week after area tournament play, which Carruthers said, “will help our pitchers. It’ll give them a break.”

In the old format, the first round was played on a Tuesday, while the second round was played on a Friday or Satur-day.

Some people believe the new format will allow more of the top teams to make the state tournament by eliminating “power” sub-state matchups.

One of those matchups happened in Coffee County last year as 2006 champion Kinston lost to eventual runner-up Millry in extra innings of the third game in
the sub-state series.

The elimination of the “power” sub-state matchups and the coinciding weaker matchups is one reason Kinston head coach Janie Wiggins likes the format.

“I wish we could’ve done that this year,” she said.

Carruthers and Thompson, though, see it possibly eliminating great teams by region, pointing to the strength of Birmingham-area teams and Huntsville-area squads.

“It’s gonna eliminate schools from Birmingham,” Thompson said. “You will only get two, and usually there is four or five.”

Wiggins, though, said she sees no drawbacks in the system - for now.

“I don’t see any drawbacks, but I haven’t seen all the details,” she said.