Geography-based leagues next year?
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- December
- 25
For everyone complaining about Clarkstown North in League 2 — how does this league look: Suffern, Clarkstown North, North Rockland, Clarkstown South, Pearl River and Nyack/TZ.
It’s more possible than you think. Schools received ballots earlier this week, and athletic directors (along with principals and superintendents) will soon be voting on aligning leagues, in every sport but football, solely by geography. Gone would be leagues based on school size, or ability to compete. Instead there would be four conferences: Roclkand, Southern Westchester, Central/Northern Westchester, and Northern Westchester/Putnam/Dutchess. The benifit is obvious: it saves money for Mahopac to play all its league games at Brewster Ice Arena instead of going to Sport-O and the Ice Hutch.
Some of the leagues might not look so bad. How about this one: White Plains, Mamaroneck, Pelham, E/T/B, Scarsdale, New Rochelle. But in other cases you’ll have Mahopac and Brewster with Carmel and Kennedy/Putnam Valley.
In any case, the votes will be counted next month and, considering that the superintendents asked for the change and now they will be voting on it, I’m thinking it will pass. Remember that baseball and softball just went from 24 regular-season games to 20 (I would expect the same for hockey, by the way).
Some of my best friends have lost their jobs recently, so in these economic times it might be inappropriate to sit here and complain about potential mismatches in high school hockey. But it would be unfortunate for Suffern to have to play Nyack/Tappan Zee, Pearl River and Clarkstown South twice a year instead of Mamaroneck, Rye and Pelham. Of course, there will still be opportunities for non-league games, and maybe some new rivalries will emerge, but it will obviously be a huge change.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 6:52 pm by Harold Gutmann. 
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maybe before this is done athletic directors and coachs coudl let us know how much additional monies it would save. I am assuming the only savings are the buses for the teams to go to and from games.
It might kind of boring when all the teams play home and away games in the same building.
The “Westchester” Division would be pretty impressive:
Rye
RTH
Pelham
Mamaroneck
White Plains
Scarsdale
New Rochelle
ETB
It would be shame to lose the rivalries and competition but doubt for the local teams in westchester it would matter much. School wont save that much money anyway with the travel. Its the upstate travel that gets expensive.
Harold, wouldn’t be surprised if CHSHL did the same.
Currently…
A
Farrell (Staten Island)
Iona (New Rochelle)
Chaminade (Mineola)
Stepinac (White Plains)
Fordham (Bronx)
St. Anthony’s (South Huntington)
B
Holy Cross (Flushing)
St. Joseph by-the-Sea (Staten Island)
Xavier (Manhattan)
St. Edmund (Brooklyn)
St. Peter’s (Staten Island)
St. Francis (Flushing)
Xaverian (Brooklyn)
McClancy (Flushing)
C
Spellman (Bronx)
St. Raymond (Bronx)
Mount St. Michael (Bronx)
Ford (Brooklyn)
Knowing how tight the CHSHL is, and considering that it looks like Burke Catholic (Goshen) is blatantly making a push to join (this year they have scheduled games against Iona, Stepinac, Chaminade, Farrell, Fordham)...I can see this happening with an emphasis on “divisional” games…
North (games played at Ice Hutch, Murray’s, Playland, etc…Ice Time for Burke Catholic home games…)
Iona
Fordham
Stepinac
Burke Catholic
Spellman
Xavier
St. Raymond (if they consider keeping program)
Mount St. Michael (if they consider keeping program)
Staten Island/Brooklyn (games played at Clove Lake, S.I. Pavillion, Coney Island)
Farrell
St. Peter’s
St. Joseph by-the-Sea
St. Edmund
Xaverian
Ford (if they consider keeping program)
Queens/Long Island (games played at the new Flushing rink, Syosset)
Chaminade
St. Anthony’s
Holy Cross
St. Francis
McClancy
I defintly think they should change the way leagues are made for example this year the L2 champs play the L3 champs in the first round of the playoffs so the L3 champs get rewarded by playing North and the L3 runner ups get a weaker team and the L4 champs get RTH now is that fair if you ask me they should have one big league and obviously you can’t play every team so the D1 teams should play eachother more and the D2 teams should play against eachother more in the regular season that way it will make the playoffs alot better
mimi you seem to be the most knowledgeable about iona prep. in terms of the offense, defense, and goal tending of this year’s team what do you think their chances for winning are? i know king, mccabe, and dimario are tough to lose but how do u feel they are coping with the situation?
I HATE MAMARONECK
JACKSON IS OVERRATED
HAGAN IS A GOOD GUY
ionaprep,
iona is a very good team, but as some posters mentioned earlier this hockey season, iona will be even better over the next 2 years.
this year is pretty much a huge practice session. yes, lopez and molinaro up front…and murphy, gillespie and mccrory in the back…are seniors…but the reinforcements upon their graduation are scary…the jv is fully loaded (5 healthy scratches/game) and competes with the likes of powerhouses chaminade, st. anthony’s and farrell on the jv level (no time here to explain this concept, as most ordinary fans will realize that chaminade/st. anthony’s varsity is mediocre, maybe above-average at best…please refer to prior posts for explanation on this situation)...anyway, in all honesty, the jv has scorers (names by de goia, mcdermott, phil l., gino, riccard, little gillespie) and defensemen (joe, little murphy) that are all varsity material (turnbull refused to cut returning 3rd/4th liners on varsity for names like mcdermott, patalano, etc.)...personally, i think that was a good move…these kids are learning as a unit on jv now, and are aiming to make a nice playoff run to hopefully bump off chaminade/st. anthony’s for the championship…come the next 2 hockey seasons, iona is going to be real fun to watch…gizzo, the soph. goalie who is doing double-time starting for varsity and backing up the good frosh on jv, will only get better…
currently, iona varsity is still good to watch…the top 2 lines are pretty dominant…cambria-molinaro-lopez…then whoever they put on the second, something like mcardle (no longer playing D i believe)-traficante (now up front too)-older pellow…the 3rd is like the young guns line i believe…nolan-lynett-little pellow…the D is like a unit constantly being worked on…in not bringing up patalano and little murphy, turnbull decided to bring back mcardle and traficante to play with the older gillespie (who played forward his first varsity year), kirincic, murphy and mccrory…i think now that matt k, the older gillespie, murphy and mccrory are pretty established, bringing mcardle and traficante back up on top will make iona even more dangerous (i think turnbull realized that, with gizzo still learning as the season goes on, iona wasn’t going to be able to bank on scoring 3/4 goals a game to win…)
in a nutshell, that is iona’s situation at the moment. basically, as long as molinaro and cambria don’t have apple core duty, iona can be lethal. without them, they can still be good, but are likely to be much weaker…the chshl is up for grabs this year, as st. anthony’s graduated a ton from last year (the team that beat st. mary’s to win the state championship in nysaha) and is still trying to gel as a team (bulk of their losses were only 1/2 goal games), chaminade seems to have a few more travel kids be playing than usual, stepinac, although a short bench, can stay in games, fordham can stay in games when things go their way and farrell will always be farrell…so of those 6, it will really be a battle for the 4 playoff spots…
I am guessing you have already decided that RTH will get League 4 champion… a team that is usually rather good. I think if you look at how playoffs are seeded anywhere this makes sense. It happens to be a product of the rules that CN is in League 2 but a fluke based on having a combined power league and a rule putting teams up and down now.
This theory goes back to the 1970’s and the old UWPL (upper westchester putnam league) days. Mahopac, Carmel, Brewster, Somers, Yorktown, Panas, Lakeland in all sports.
While it might seem unfair to some schools, the traditional rivalries will be renewed and this will be great for the Section overall.
Travel costs will go down, OT will go down, insurance might go down a bit…. probably savings $$$$ in the long run.
Cant blame the AD’s for this one. This comes straight from the Governor, like it or not.
Keep an open mind here…one thing is for sure, attendance at these games will go WAY up just based on location and rivalry!
Change? It doesn’t make cents.
Suffern will dispatch its Rockland competition and non-league schedule the following: Mamroneck, Pelham, Rye..the usual suspects with the usual travel (costs).
Nyack/TZ will complete its Rockland schedule and look to schedule the Carmel’s, Greeley’s and JFKs..practically the same travel.
Sleepy Hollow/Irvington plays home games at Sport-o-rama?
I can’t wait for those Mt. Vernon vs. Pelham basketball game.
Football is the one big exception, even though the travel for a football team is probably 2 or 3 times more the coast than travel for a basketball or hockey team.
This plan is just the illusion of saving money. If you want geographic leagues, fine, but don’t expect it to save much travel cost.
I personally think geography based is a great idea. Being a player in Section 1 I have found one of the downsides of games being that most of them are against school people have never heard about or care about. Although it shouldn’t, I believe this could have an effect on players abilities to player harder knowing they are playing a cross town rival like White Plains, and not some school like Fox Lane (No offense to Fox Lane High School).
Save money – How about the teachers/administrators/superintendants and politicians not getting any more pay hikes and letting them pay for part of their health benefits and also reducing their pension benefits. This is where the majority of the cost hikes come into play.
Harold, any idea if this means Sleepy Hollow/Irvington would play in the Rockland league or one of the Westchester leagues?
Also, if this is going to happen, they should consider putting Rockland back in section 9 (even if only in hockey). For sports other than hockey, it is probably a shorter drive for a team like Nyack to get all the way up to Sullivan county as it is for them to get to Dutchess, and in the case of hockey, it you add in the four section 9 teams to the six rockland teams, you can still create a power-based system with Suffern, MW, CN, NR, & Burke in the upper league with CS, PR, NTZ, Newburgh & O’Neill in the lower league.
Hockey is very unusual since it is rink based, not school based. The Rockland schools never travel further than Brewster Ice Arena for league games. Which is really not that long of a trip. They are not going to Mahopac High School, which is further.
What is the cost difference of school bus travel from North Rockland to Suffern (Sport-o-rama) and North Rockland to Brewster Ice Arena. Is the added toll, gas, and bus driver time that much more?
In the big picture I don’t believe a lot of money will be saved on travel costs. Both the stronger and weaker teams will stiil do the same travel for the non-league portion of their schedule to ensure some even competion.
This system is as good as any other. Suffern would be the only team getting the short end of the stick. Today it would be fine with North, and North Rockland very strong. But, next year, no Willows, Mac, or Shu, and NR without that kid who beat RTH by himself. Suffern’s toughest competition could actually be Pearl River.
How much worse could it be than this years leagues though? There are 3 teams in every league this year that are not in the right placement. Last year was supposed to be a fluke with all the teams from different leagues beating each other right??? WRONG!!!!
The big question now (forgive me if I’m wrong) that I don’t think has been answered yet is how are the playoffs going to work???
Will the playoffs be effected by this?
I agree that the Rockland division would have been better this year rather than next year, because this year CN and North Rockland are both very strong teams. But next year, CN will not have stars Willows, Shuman and McIndoe, and North Rockland will not have stars O’Conner, Meany and their goalie. Both teams will not be as strong nest year as they are this year, but with the exception of Suffern, it will make the Rockland division very competitive next year. Suffern would truly get the short end of the stick.
Clearly CN and NR have solid players other than their stars I mentioned above, that will be key players next year, but all i’m saying is that for Suffern’s sake, the Rockland division would have been better this year.
Harold,
How are the state rankings developed, and why don’t your power rankings reflect what we see in the sports writers rankings?
Just wondering
I understand the attraction of geographic leagues. I just don’t believe it is a big cost saving item for hockey and basketball.
Suffern hockey will seek out non-league games with the better Westchester teams and the Greeley’s and Carmel’s of Westchester will look to schedule the Clarkstown South’s and Nyack’s for some like-kind non-league competition.
Where travel cost savings could really be achieved, Football, the AD’s choose to exclude it. Perhaps they could have an AA-A geographic league and B-C geographic football league.
Many A class football teams can hang or outright beat AA teams. Nyack (A) would beat Suffern and the Clarkstowns (AA). Even Pearl River and T-Z Football would be more competitive against large schools Suffern and the Clarkstowns than they are currently against class A schools Ossining and Harrrison.
Harold, in a much earlier blog complained about covering all those football blowouts, i.e., New Rochelle vs. Scarsdale, perhaps geographical mixed football class could help remedy this.
If the schools want to save the travel costs they could eliminate the buses and the players/parents do the driving for them. Not all schools provide buses for hockey, and with most games not “after school” like basketball / football it works and save the district real money.
As for this proposal, some good points, bad points. I expect it will pass.
As Al Bundy says, when the non league schedules get factored back in I’m not sure thee will be much difference from today’s system.
Assuming this passes can we expect the Northern Westchester / Putnam / Pawling division to get their league “preview” before or after Christmas break?????
Many of the players have driver’s licenses and can drive themselves and maybe one or two others to games and practices.
Can’t imagine school districts allowing 16-17 year olds driving themselves and other to school sanctioned away games.
anyone have an iona-chaminade score? (started at 3 at ice hutch…fordham-st. anthony’s to follow…)
They should make hockey an exception for all the good reasons mentioned above. There’s no need to include hockey just because they include other sports. Hockey is already treated differently in many ways that make good sense. They should keep using common sense to make exceptions for hockey.
I think its a bigger deal for other sports. Blind Brook v. Mount Vernon basketball?
Football would actually be dangerous if it was all by geography. Can you imagine Pelham vs New Rochelle in football? I mean we lose to Byram Hills by 40, imagine to the AA football champs.
Other sections just do it by school size right?
Chaminade 8-6 over Iona. Chaminade had 16 shots on goal for the game
I’m pretty sure they’ve done the same thing with lax for this upcoming season, unless it was just a scrambling up of teams for each league. a few teams were supposed to move up, and weren’t scheduled to do so. according to the new league this year, we’ve gotten moved up as well, and i’m guessing it might have something to do with geography. not hockey related, but still
I like the idea, and think many would too. I would even say re-name the leauges, to North, South, East, West. I can only remember the look of the face of the Monroe Woodbury parents when they saw the backed up traffic on 287 one time.
Just wondering,
I believe that Neil Kerr of the Syracuse Post-Dispatch puts together the state rankings. He has a source in Section 1 but it’s not me, which explains why my rankings are different.
Suffern having to play South twice, Nytz and pearl river instead of Mamaroneck, Rye and Pelham is a horrible idea.
And North is 2 late Shuman and Willows will be gone. we want to play North this year not next. this is a horrible idea.
Just checked Max preps, and Willows has 48 points, and Shuman has 46. All of those points in just 8 games?
can u imagine suffern being in section 9 and mamaroneck and suffern state finals? i mean the chances r slim but not impossible if that did happen, but it wud be a great match specially for the state title. does anyone know if this is even an option? not that it wud matter that much, but i think after this year CN will go down alot and it will be mamaroneck suffern and wp/mahopac if they can start having consistency every year.
Why does football get a pass?
All or nobody
Why is football better than all other sports?
Boys more important than girls?
I am sure Title IX should can be inserted here! !
Its dangerous.
In no other sport is school size as important. Pelham football had a roster of 19 healthy players by their 8th game. New Rochelle probably had 45. And a JV, and a Freshmen team of comparable size. Pelham has a JV of 23.
So when Pelham’s freshman quarterback gets tackled by Ian Solomon, there is some serious danger there.
In every other sport… sure there are going to be blowouts…. but in football there might be casualties.
The solution for football is to make it class size, then geographical. Like in class B last year B-1 had the 6 biggest schools in class B, and b-2 had the smallest. Instead, make it b-South, and B-North.
They should do that for everysport. It’s something imbetween. For other sports you could have d-1 south, d-1 north, d-1 rockland and d-1 central. d-2 south, d-2 north, d-2 rockland and d-2 central.
Let the A and AA schools play with eachother in basketball, baseball, soccer, field hockey, and softball. I mean teams in these sports routinely play teams out of their class size. In football a few teams play up or down one class. Like Rye-Harrison.
sec1 fan,
Ian Soloman is an offensive lineman, not defensive. But he could still destroy a person of any size.
Pelham’s freshman QB also played defense…so the point is still valid. AA 310 pound superstar senior linemen shouldnt be playing against teams that are forced to have 14 year old QB’s.
so will this make my school tax go down? I think not, it is just another ploy to line their pocket and never give anything back!Face it people hockey in schools will never get the benefit football does!
Iona and Fordham both lost. Terrible showing for both.
Well it is Pelham’s fault for not having a good enough youth football organization (If they have one in the first place). The same thing happens in hockey if a team with no roots has players that are small and young. Its about luck, and the ability of the city to prepare its players.
People are mentioning him because he used to play hockey. And hes not just offensive, he goes both ways
i think every sport is different and it cant be based on geography for every sport. bc school sizes do matter in some more than others
Rome Christmas Tournament:
Queensbury 3 – Rye 1
What grouping would Somers/North Salem be in?
Carmel, Mahopac, Brewster, Yorktown…Would that include Greely, Fox Lane, Ossining, and Pawling?
mamk, how would suffern possibly get into section 9?
What was the final of the Mamogame last night?
Section 1 site had the game playin last night. Stepinac site says its tonight a Mamo
anyone have an iona-burke catholic update? (started 12:30 at ice hutch)
Mamaroneck vs Stepinac tonight (SAT) 7:30 at Hommocks
Orlando is the one who provides the info for the state rankings – maybe him and harold could get on the same page.
Iona 4-1 over Burke Catholic
Putnam North-
Mahopac, Carmel, Brewster, JJCR, Lakeland/Panas, Yorktown
West North- Greeley, JFK, Ossining, Somers, Byram Hills,
Fox Lane, Pleasantville…
Hows that?
What is RTH thinking by entering the Mamk tournament? Extra losses for the kids’ confidence?
Iona -4
Burke-1
What,-
I think Mamk was responding to my earlier post about how if they were going to regionalize all of the leagues in Section 1, They should just move Rockland County back into Section 9 (where they were until 1987). This would make a lot of sense as a whole since a school like Nyack would have just as far to travel to go up to Sullivan county as they would to go to Dutchess, and for schools like Suffern & North Rockland who are on the border of Orange County, it’s even closer. There are only 10 high schools in Rockland (11 if you include Albertus Magnus), so it wouldn’t be a huge shift.
In terms of hockey, since all of the Section 9 teams are in Orange County, it would work out perfectly. The closest high school to North Rockland is O’Neill. Monroe-Woodbury is only about 15 minutes from Suffern High School (A shorter drive than the drive to get to the TZ Bridge, forget about anything on the other side of it). If they were to do this, you would have 10 section 9 teams (perfect for splitting into two power-based leagues.
If this were to happen, and the whole state was changing to georgraphy-based systems to save money, they would probably go back to the quarter-finals being against the closest section like the used to. So Section 1 would play 9, 5 would play 6, 2 would play 3 and 7 would play 10 in the quarterfinals every year. That would mean that instead of the Suffern/Mamk game being for the section 1 crown, it would be for the right to go to Utica.
Suffern1-
The Section 1 website (www.section1hockey.com) had the Mamk tourney listed as Friday & Saturday instead of Saturday & Sunday, but that has been fixed.
I don’t think Orlando had anything to do with this initial set of rankings. From what I understand, they do normally consult people in each section to help assemble the rankings since this isn’t the pros or college and the games aren’t televised, but from what I have heard, they did not consult everyone they should have for this first set of rankings. Had they spoken to people down here, I don’t think they would have had CN being 4th in the state or Ossining 7th. Ossining isn’t even in 1st place in League 3, so I’m not sure how they could be considered the 7th best D2 team in the state.
rankings,
I know that Orlando did not have any input into this week’s rankings. I’m not actually sure anyone from Section 1 did, which could explain why Ossining is ranked ahead of Pelham
...and if this doesn’t pass ~ may I suggest that the league previews be reversed next year, and we hear about League 4 first and League 1 later on!
I really like that idea Updates?.
Since Harold can’t seem to find the time to call 7 league 4 coaches before 2009 maybe he can put up another posting about how intriguing John Jay vs Iona will be.
I too would like to see a L4 preview but I think Harold has bigger things on his plate right now, like maybe his job. I’m a L3 player and yes I would like to see more attention on the lower leagues because i’m tired of reading the same things every day from suffern, mamo, pelham, rye, and CN people but there are not enough lower league people to keep a conversation going. Thats why he doesn’t cover us as much.
I know its not the same but here is what you need to know about L4
SH/I is legit, have 2 of the best players in the section a pretty good goalie, they should be in L2
JFK has 1 very good player and their new goalie is Ok but not enough to carrie them like Delaverne did last year.
PR has a few good players on O and D and a good goalie, but none are special
LP has a couple pretty good players but i dont think they have much else
Carmel has a very good goalie and a defense bad enoug to make him look average. not much on O either
Greeley also has a good goalie but nothing else
TZ/Nyack is getting better but still has a long way to go.
pelham has a youth program, but good youth programs don’t automatically make up for town population. the underwhelming amount of kids that are available to play football (soccer is big in pelham from travel leagues up through high school), combined with STELLER coaching on the high school level, hurts pelham’s football success chances as it is. so imagine pelham, already losing to mediocre teams in blow outs, playing state champs new ro. we already take a beating from rye every year
God for bid Pehlam should lose in more than one sport, OH NO! Just suck it up and play the sport. There are plenty of schools who get destroyed in every sport, but they don’t whine about it because they are having fun, and that is what is most important.
we already have a god awful football program, adding new ro and mt vernon to the mix makes it even worse. and not only is it bad cause that destroys any hope of a semi-decent season (for us that means around .500, but even worse would be an improvement) its extremely dangerous to have sophmore, and in pelham’s case freshmen, playing against juniors and seniors the size of kyle ramaljo in every position.
and ask any school that has crappy sports, do they like it? no they don’t you retard. no team deserves to be put in a league where they will never win, or even do decent.
Good point Pelican Power.
I admire the kids who sustain very bad sports programs…but if you talk to them, it is not fun.