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Breaking: FHSAA Board of Directors Meeting Rules on Roster Size, Schedule Length and Playoff Structure!

Written by Lee Roggenburg on . Posted in , , , .

via the FHSAA website

Yesterday and today, the FHSAA Board of Directors met and voted on a lot of initiatives, including three key ones for lacrosse.

The first one concerned the size of the playoff rosters and that was increased to 35 going forward. That was important to the coaches for two reasons, depth of available players for a short Final Four turnaround and to reduce significantly the amount of roster kids who were not allowed the honor of dressing for a playoff game.

See the Agenda item here: Florida High School Athletic Association (fhsaa.com)

The second one concerned lengthening the season by a week, but that was turned down, basically because the Board felt it would interfere with other sports.

See the Agenda Item here: Florida High School Athletic Association (fhsaa.com)

The third one was the most anticipated, as the Board voted to change the playoff format substantially. District games are no longer required to be played because all teams will now make the District playoffs. MaxPreps power rankings will guide the seedings. Each District winner automatically qualifies and then in each region the next four highest ranked teams by MP will also be added to the regional brackets. All eight teams will then be seeded by ranking, with 1 vs 8 and so on.

This is huge for the sport given how some of our Districts are stacked. For example, you would likely have seen a Region 4, 1A Boy’s bracket with Saint Andrew’s, Belen Jesuit, Saint John Paul, Oxbridge, Gulliver, Pine Crest, American Heritage-Plantation and one other like King’s Academy, Westminster Christian, etc. as the eight teams!

Both Saint Edward’s and Benjamin would have gotten to the brackets, along with Ponte Vedra, Creekside and likely Nease all representing their 2A district. Plenty of great matchups to look forward to!

See the Agenda item here: Florida High School Athletic Association (fhsaa.com)

One other thing I noticed that looms favorably going forward this year and next is that the new makeup of the Board of Directors has more lacrosse knowledge than in recent years:

Mike Eto, Athletic Director of Chiles (Tallahassee)

Adam Winter, Athletic Director of King’s Academy

Jeff Johnson, Athletic Director of Pine Crest

All three of these Board Members are supportive and experienced with the sport at their schools. It’s just another layer of institutional knowledge for lacrosse that is welcome for us to see.

A very significant day for the sport as we got the playoff approach going forward that will be quite the experience for all of us!

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