We, as a sport society, love to rank teams and plays.   The "Worldwide Leader of Sports" practically created a culture of rankings.  Not one for counter-culture, I am going to give you my unofficial rankings/tournament outlook of the Indiana State High School Hockey season of 2017-2018.  

This year, the state tournament is played over two different weekends.  The first weekend in March, the "round-robin" portion, is scheduled to be played at The Ice Box and Compton Family Ice Arena in South Bend, Indiana.   The state championship games will be played the following weekend (2nd weekend of March) at the SportOne Parkview Icehouse in Fort Wayne.  Now, as a scorekeeper of high school hockey games (and whose son plays high school hockey),  I have had an opportunity to see almost every team in the state play at some point this season.  I see all the scores from around the state each week and get a chance to evaluate with my special "Jeff Lafferty Eye Test."   Just a note before we start - I chose to break the teams into five divisions however, the state can have as many divisions as they like, so long as they feel that each division would offer the most competitive hockey to it's teams and end with the most competitive championship game possible.  That being said, here's my educated guess of what the state brackets should look like about 5 weeks from now:

Again, this is my best guess at what it should look like early in February when teams  see their schedule for the tournament weekend.  Unfortunately, in the end, even 4H isn’t fair (bad joke I know but I hope you got the point).   

Always the toughest part of deciding the tournament divisions is figuring out the last two teams ranked in a division.  On many occasions, those last two teams feel they should be slotted into a lower division based on competition.  Imagine if the NCAA basketball tournament was done in classes like high school sports.  The "Worldwide Leader in Sports" would have shows upon shows and debates as to why team A shouldn’t be in this bracket and should be in this bra…..wait that already happens doesn’t it?  Oops,  I guess I am just a bad as everybody else!

In the end, as a hockey coach once told me, “ Jeff,  everybody can be a jock but it takes a true sports fan to be an athletic supporter.”

High School Hockey - Did You Know:

1. Hockey is not a school sponsored sport.   Some schools may recognize the hockey team as a club and some private schools recognize it as a sport.  But hockey is not governed by the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), which is the governing body for all school sponsored sports in Indiana. Indiana State High School Hockey Association (ISHSHA) is the governing body for hockey in the state of Indiana.   Both governing bodies are separate from one another and the ISHSHA does follow a lot of the guidelines that the IHSAA has regarding student athletes.   
2. Academic requirements are needed in order to play hockey just like in any other sport in the IHSAA.
3. Each team with the exception of one, Culver A, is required to be a member of a league.  
4. The state leagues are Fort Wayne, Illiana, Hoosier-Championship and Hoosier-Commissioner, and Michiana.  
5. This season there are 32 high school teams in the state of Indiana.    
6. The ISHSHA has representatives from each league (and Culver) that sit on the governing body.  The governing body meets in early February to have a seeding meeting to seed the teams based on crossover game scores(games vs. other teams that are not in your league) and league game scores.   
7. The goal every year is to have the most competitive state invitational tournament.   
8.  Crossover games are scheduled each season, typically from the first weekend in October to the second to last weekend in January, a week before the seeding meeting.   
9. Teams must play in 8 crossover games in order to qualify for the state tournament; players must play in at least 6 crossover games.   Exceptions have been made for players that can’t play in 6 games, for things like multi-sport athletes and injuries.  
10. A player cannot be invited to play in the state tournament if the player receives 5 game misconducts in a season.  Teams will not be invited if the team receives 10 game misconducts in a season.