Does The CIAC Show Favoritism To The FCIAC?

The postseason has proven what everybody really knew all along: the FCIAC is - hands down - the best lacrosse league in the state.

Eight FCIAC teams made the semifinals - out of 20 available slots - in the boys and girls state tournaments. On the girls side, the finals in both the Division I (Greenwich-New Canaan) and Division II (Staples-Fairfield Ludlowe) tournaments are all-FCIAC affairs.

But does the CIAC show favoritism to the FCIAC?

You couldn't blame St. Bernard and Haddam-Killingworth if they might be thinking that, as both had to travel much farther than their opponents (Staples and Ludlowe) for Wednesday night's semifinal doubleheader at Bunnell.

After the quarterfinal round, the game are played at neutral locations, which in theory means equidistant locations between the two competing schools.

But maybe it's more theory than reality, or maybe the CIAC flunked geography.

Here are the distances the four schools traveled for Wednesday's twinbill:

Game one -- Staples, 15 miles; St. Bernard, 67 miles.
Game two -- Ludlowe, 11 miles; Haddam-Killingworth, 52 miles

Is that fair?

Now, Bunnell has a virtually new and beautiful artificial turf field, so it's a perfect site to host state tournament games, and it actually came in quite handy since the two games were played in steady rain.

If the games were played on grass fields, the conditions would have become terrible, and that certainly wasn't the case at Bunnell. But you can't assign sites based on the threat of rain.

A logical question to ask is this: why couldn't Wednesday's doubleheader been played at West Haven, which also has an artificial turf field and annually hosts football state playoff games?

If the games were played in West Haven, this is what the mileage would have been:

Game one -- Staples, 25 miles; St. Bernard, 53 miles
Game two -- Ludlowe, 21 miles; Haddam-Killingworth, 32 miles

It would have been one thing if Bunnell was chosen as the semifinal site well in advance. Then, it's luck of the draw,  based on how the brackets pan out.

But the CIAC did not announce Bunnell as the semifinal site until after the quarterfinal games were completed on Monday.

Now, this is not to imply that the location impacted the outcome. They could have played these games in Iraq, and the Wreckers and Falcons were going to prevail.

But that sort of proves the original point - the FCIAC teams didn't need that little extra advantage of lesser travel.

Having said of all this, Bunnell is the perfect site for the championship game because it involves teams less than 20 minutes away.

There was some grumbling that the semifinal games shouldn't have been played at all on Wednesday because of the conditions. Those folks -- sorry for the pun - were all wet.

Unless there was lightning and thunder - which there wasn't - these games had to played as scheduled.

Bunnell athletic director Dave Johnson did an excellent job. He even set up a tent for the scorekeepers, the clock operator and media members not smart enough to sit in the press box.

Hopefully,  the weather will be better Saturday morning - faceoff is at 10:45 for the first of the two finals - and the games will attract crowds worthy of a title clash.