The high school football regular season comes to a close and when the night is finished the pairings for next week’s opening round of the playoffs will be set. Officials with the Iowa High School Athletic Association will monitor the scores and once the playoff qualifiers are determined the Board in Control will match them up.
The Association’s Bud Legg says geography has been the standard consideration in the past, and they also want to have a district champ from one district play a district runner-up from another district. They would also like to avoid also like to avoid regular season rematches though Legg admits that can be difficult in certain cases. Legg says travel problems sometimes makes it impractical to split teams up if one team has to travel several hundred miles on a school night.
Legg says the pairings will be grouped to indicate which teams would play in the quarterfinal round. In 4A through A Legg says there is generally a good east-west split that stays that way all the way through the semifinals. In eight man, it’s a north-south split.
Legg says they hope to have the pairings on their web site before midnight. Legg says weather or other problems can cause the pairings to be delayed, but he says if they get all the scores by 11, then they can have the pairings by midnight. The playoffs begin next Wednesday.