CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Division I may not be the only thing changing next season. Adjustments could be made to the CHSAA state tournament with Nazareth being officially placed in the higher division by the league’s athletic directors Tuesday night and St. Michael Academy of the Archdiocese closing its doors.
“We are still going to have a comprehensive state tournament like we had this year,” CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens girls president Denise Hillig said. “It’s just a matter whose dioceses have what representation and that hasn’t been decided yet.
The fate of Nazareth was just one of the things influencing the decision on how the brackets will look, according to Hillig. The Monsignor Marin Diocese of Buffalo sent five teams down last season at a tremendous travel expense and Rockville Centre (L.I.) has yet to make a decision on its squads as well. A decision will be made during a meeting in October.
The inclusion of Nazareth in Division I, where it can play as a Class AA school, has an effect on all three classifications. Putting them in Division II would have created a competitive imbalanced that the two-year-old format was designed to try to eliminate after Christ the King won the state Federation tournament as an ‘A’ team in 2008. Nazareth, potentially a nationally ranked team with talent from closing St. Mike’s, would have to play as a ‘B’ team if it was in the lower division.
“If they put us in Division II, we have to go up as a B and are going to beat everybody by 50 points,” Nazareth coach Apache Paschall said. “What would the Federation do then?”
In its current format, only the top three regular-season finishers in Brooklyn/Queens go to the ‘AA’ state tournament and the next three go to the ‘A.’ Right now that would mean that two teams would not be able to compete in the state playoffs and up to two legitimate ‘AA’ teams would be playing in the ‘A’ tournament. Christ the King, Mary Louis, Archbishop Molloy, Bishop Ford and St. Michael Academy, Paschall’s former school, have all played in the highest classification in the last two seasons.
“It changes the whole dynamic of that ‘AA’ bracket now,” Molloy coach Tom Catalanotto said. “I guess the ‘A’ bracket will be affected the most because you are going to have a couple of strong teams down there now.”
There could be some wiggle room to make changes. When St. Michael Academy was in the mix, it played Staten Island champion St. Peter’s each season to determine the seeding of the two Archdiocesan squads in the AA bracket. With the Eagles gone there is no clear second team from that diocese. Moore Catholic, which has won 40-plus games over the last two seasons and back-to-back Archdiocesan Class A titles has expressed interest in moving up.
“It’s going to be very interesting to see how all that pans out,” Christ the King coach Bob Mackey said.