The 2011 State Tournaments were planned almost perfectly. Class A had their tournament at Haddox Field in Bloomington and it went very well, finishing up on Sunday, August 21st as Stockmen's Irish won the crown. This coincided with the first week of the B and C tournament at Glencoe and Brownton.
The Class B tournament was the best one in several years. When the super sections whittled the teams to eight, a quality tournament was assured. Sauk Rapids won the B championship beating Burnsville on Sunday August 28th at Glencoe.
The Class C tournament was a little different. The play was excellent and there were a lot of good games, however, the schedule wasn't thought out enough in advance to please the fans.
Having the last weekend all to themselves, Class C started out on Friday night and played two games at each site. But then there were only three games total (two at Brownton and one at Glencoe) on Saturday and Sunday was even worse with only two games at Glencoe. On Monday, it ended with a 13 inning championship game in Brownton that Isanti won 4-3 over Waconia.
The C tournament just was not planned out. It would have been obvious that Friday night wasn't needed if the Board members had played out the tourney ahead of time (I guess that meeting was in the fitness room of the Holiday Inn). That Friday night is a big night for High School football and that is what the Board should have planned for. Then there could have been at least three games at each park on Saturday and three games to split on Sunday with the championship on Monday.
This year we are going to pay the price for that empty feeling on the last weekend of 2011. The Class B tournament will still be two weekends, but it will be the last two weekends ending on Labor Day. The C tournament will be expanded to include 48 teams and also move to single elimination (this is another major screw-up by the board--not expansion, but letting more teams from one area make the tournament because of attendance--more on that in a later blog). The region champions will all get byes the first weekend and the other 32 teams will all play one game. The Class B super sections will be played the same weekend. We should never have one class playing their State Tournament while another is in Super Sections or Regions.
The Board also has moved to limit third site involvement. I've always felt that the more teams we involved in the tournament the better. I know that the two major sites always point out that they are the ones bidding and that they don't want to share their profits with anyone else. Well, teams shouldn't be in the hosting business to make money. Yes, you want to at least break even, but the goal should be to have everyone see and play on your field and take pride in the baseball amenities and community cohesiveness that you have to offer.
Here is hoping that the Board has thought (and played) out the schedule for the State Tournaments this year and things run smoothly.
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