[BillyMac]

State tournament games are solely based on coaches votes. The more votes an official gets, the further that official goes into the tournament.

Connecticut has been doing it this way for tournament games for at least forty years, and believe it, or not, coaches usually do a pretty good job of selecting the best officials. Every year I look at the tournament list of the thirty-plus officials selected from my local board for the state tournament and only have to scratch my head for one, or two, of the selected officials, and they're usually gone by the end of the first round.

Officials must have worked at least eight varsity games to be eligible for state tournament games.

The number of officials selected from each local board is based on how many high schools that local board services. The more schools serviced by a local board, the more officials from that board get selected to work the tournament.

All state tournament games up to (but not including) the quarterfinals are two person games, quarterfinals and up are all three person games. Two person, or three person (for later rounds), crews always have officials from the same local board, one never works with strangers.

Which local group officials work each individual game? Let's say we have five local boards in the state, A,B,C,D, and E.

Let's say we're local officials group A. We can work games that involve two teams from the local group A geographic region (for example A versus A). We can also work games that involve teams from local group geographic regions B, C, D, and E, (for example C versus D) as long as a local group geographic region A school isn't in the game. We can't work any games that involve an A region team against any other region team (for example A versus D).

No "home jobs" in the state tournament. The coaches run the show and that's they way they want it.

Schools that win at least 40% of their games (usually eight wins) (with a few exceptions) make the state tournament. Most tournament classes are based on school population. One exception is an "open" division, mainly for schools that can take students from outside a specific geographic area; Catholic schools, magnet schools, charter schools, and state technical schools, especially these types of schools that have been very successful in the state tournament in past years due to their broad reach to recruit students (I said recruit "students", I didn't say recruit "athletes", wink, wink, nod, nod).

The state high school interscholastic sports governing body has one assigner who assigns both boys, and girls, games. Local assigners have nothing to do with state tournament assignments.

All state finals, all divisions, for both genders, are played on a weekend in late March at the Mohegan Sun Casino's arena, home of the WNBA Mohegan Sun. Some have a problem with it's non-central location (it's in the far southeast corner of the state). Some have a problem with students having to pass by the gaming area (under twenty-one are not actually allowed in the gaming area) to get to the arena. The students will actually see adults gambling, smoking, and drinking alcohol, thus contributing to juvenile delinquency. Some have a problem with some of the games being played Sunday (Mohegan Sun Casino tried a Friday/Saturday format for a few years but it interfered with many of its Friday night entertainment activities, so they switched to a Saturday/Sunday format). Connecticut high school sports are seldom played on Sundays, being the Lord's Day, a day of rest, and all (like it was the eighteenth century).

Here's a new, interesting twist for my local board this year. Previous to this year, officials from my local board, if selected by the coaches, could work both boys, and girls, state tournament games. For several years, other local boards in Connecticut made their officials chose to work either boys tournament games, or girls tournament games, but not both. My local board was an outlier.

My local board made a change this year, following the policy of all the other local boards in the state, now, if selected to work both, our local board officials must chose to work either boys tournament games, or girls tournament games, but not both.

The reason stated was to open up state tournament assignments to as many of our local board officials as possible.

Needless to say, the dozen, or so, guys that worked both boys, and girls, state tournament games in the past were quite upset. They believed that if they were selected by both boys, and girls, coaches to work the tournament, they should get tournament assignments for both boys, and girls games.

Our meetings, were to say the least, very interesting this past year.