Carroll HS 4A State Runners Up in the 2017 High School State Tournament. Photo Courtesy Parkview Sports Network.
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.”