Before looking ahead to Wednesday’s semifinal matchups - and they are dandies - this bears repeating:
It is completely unacceptable and nothing short of mind-boggling for the AIA to schedule Rose Mofford softball tournament games this way.
After the first week of the tournament, average game times generally approach two hours, plus about 20 minutes in between to allow for warmups and fielding practice, so for games to be scheduled 90 minutes apart from one another is assanine.
Monday night’s Xavier-Buena game was “scheduled” for 7:30 (based on the 90 minute theory between games), which means the game would have taken an hour, then 20-30 minutes for the next teams’ warmups.
How many one-hour state tournament games have been played in the past five years?
The late afternoon games went their normal 100-120 minutes, so the 5A-I quarterfinals began at 8:45 p.m. and ended at 10:45. That means Buena, which is from Sierra Vista, didn’t arrive home from the bus ride until 2 or 3 a.m.
It’s confoundingly idiotic, and so simple to fix - start games earlier and leave about 2-2 1/2 hours between game times - it’s exhausting and difficult coming up with excuses.
At this point in the 4A and 5A tournaments, there are so few games and teams left to play they can use fields simultaneously, which should cut down on possible delays.
Way too late now. We’ve already seen an unbelievably poor disservice handed to players, fans and media. We’re just not sure why.
Definitely had to be tough on the Buena players. And AP exams are this week - hope the girls had some study time on the bus. 1.5 hours is definitely not enough time - games were running behind all day Saturday. And that’s not even allowing for any extra-inning games that come up often at this stage in the tournament. Hope the AIA takes your comments to heart & does some different scheduling next year!