David Riley wrote:
>>>"3) There are
certainly teams in Illinois that can give the South
Carolina teams a run for their money, if not win by a
large margin. The difference is that the South Carolina
coaches are allowed to compete nationally throughout the
year--Illinois teams are lucky if they can attend ONE national
tournament, and there is currently a proposal before our
state association that would eliminate
that."
And Anthony replied:
>>Good to see that such
proposal is in the works,
Maybe Mr. Riley can
clarify this point.... but it sounds to me like the
proposal would be to prohibit participation in even the
national tournaments--something which I think would be an
ENORMOUS detriment to the rest of the circuit.
It
doesn't surprise me that, for example, Brookwood HS was
able to completely decimate the remaining teams at
BU's competition a few weeks ago. As Anthony said,
competing against lots of other teams--especially the good
ones--is one of the best ways to foster improvement.
Insulating teams and preventing them from going out-of-state
would have the exact opposite effect; I think it is an
inherently bad idea, and I certainly hope that any such
measures would be protested vociferously.