The MIAA hockey committee won’t let the Super 8 go down without a fight.
In the wake of the Tournament Management Committee’s April 15 decision to shelve the Division 1A tournament, better known as the Super 8, for the next four years, the hockey committee voted unanimously to appeal the TMC vote to the MIAA board of directors.
On May 10, the board voted 15-0 to delay the decision until the TMC and the hockey committee have a chance to discuss the possible change in the coming weeks.
“We would just like the opportunity to sit down and give our opinion on this,” said board member Dan Shine, Arlington Catholic boys hockey coach. “We just haven’t had that opportunity yet.”
Although a return of the Super 8 is on the table, it is in no way guaranteed.
“It might not change a thing,” board president Jeff Granatino (Marshfield) said. “The vote might stay the same, but at least everyone will have had a chance to be heard and then we can move forward.”
No timetable was announced for the meetings that will ultimately decide the fate of the Super 8, but it’s a step in the right direction from the news that floored the local hockey community a month ago.
The original decision to pause the tournament came following a 12-2 vote by the TMC to not accept any applications for the annual boys high school hockey 1A tournament until at least July 1, 2025, a motion brought on by the MIAA Blue Ribbon Committee.
If the decision sticks following the meetings between the TMC and hockey committee, it would end a 30-year run for the high school Super 8, which began for hockey in 1991, followed by baseball in 2014.
According to the TMC, the vote was passed to give the MIAA four years to collect data and determine if the original justification behind the Super 8 — essentially, to level the playing field between the public schools and ever-dominant Catholic schools — is still relevant as it sets out on its new statewide playoff format in the fall.
“We’re trying to look at this and say, as we roll out the new state tournament, how do we make sure we’re doing it the right way,” said Pamela Gould (Sandwich), the presenter on behalf of the MIAA Blue Ribbon Committee.
“(The pause) will give us four years to really look at the data. When the 1As were put in a long time ago, there was more of a perceived dominance by certain schools. I think that’s become less and less over time. This will allow us to assess where is the dominance, and does it really exist?”
Since the inception of the Super 8, Catholic Memorial owns the most 1A titles with 13 — a dozen of which came in the first 15 years of the tournament’s existence. Since then, public schools have won four 1A crowns in the past 13 years. Reading was the first public school to bring it home in 2008, followed by Hingham in 2010 and Arlington in 2017.
John Messuri’s Arlington Spy Ponders doubled up on titles in 2020 when the Super 8 was called off on the eve of the title game due to COVID-19, resulting in co-champions between Arlington and Pope Francis. The tournament was not held in 2021 due to the continuation of the pandemic.
At BC High, John Flaherty’s Eagles own the second-most titles with six, including the school’s back-to-back wins in 2018 and 2019. For now, the Eagles’ quadruple-overtime victory over Pope Francis in 2019 marks the last true title game in Super 8 history.
Aside from the question of whether or not a Catholic school dominance still exists as it used to, other issues influencing the TMC vote came down to an array of inconsistencies between the Super 8s and the MIAA’s other divisional tournaments — specifically, the fact that the 1As are held in only two sports. Plus, they are only held for boys, which raises Title IX gender-equity concerns.
Another issue was the fact that the tournaments are played in a double-elimination format, guaranteeing more tournament games for the 10 Super 8 participants than the rest.
Other concerns were the fact that the games are held at better venues and in better time slots than the rest of the tournaments, plus the fact that an opinion-based selection committee chooses who gets in and who is left out, as opposed to the MIAA power-rating system to determine seeding that will go into effect this fall.
At the initial TMC meeting, Gould referred to the Super 8 as an “inherent, discriminatory practice,” that leads to an “elitist mentality” in which select schools are viewed as better than the rest.
‘It really is what kids aspire to’
The initial decision to halt the Super 8 came as a surprise to the Massachusetts hockey community.
“Initially, I think it was just kind of shock and disappointment,” Flaherty said. “I mean, it was surprising. We had heard that they were looking at maybe changing it to just single elimination or looking at a way to revamp it, but nobody, and I mean nobody, knew of a plan to possibly cancel it.
“They didn’t talk to the coaches, they didn’t talk to the administrators, they didn’t talk to the hockey committee, and they didn’t talk to the coaches association, so they made this decision, in my opinion, in a vacuum, essentially, to accomplish an agenda.”
Malden Catholic head coach Chris Kuchar was equally stunned by the news.
“Every public-school kid, every private-school kid, they all want to play in the Super 8,” said the third-year MC bench boss. “It’s the biggest tournament of the year. That’s what they strive for and I don’t think it’s elitist to want to strive for that. If you’re going to take it away without thinking about alternative opportunities, I just think that’s very short-sighted and disappointing.”
The hockey Super 8 began in 1991. Flaherty began coaching at BC High in 1992. Since then, his entire coaching career has revolved around the 1A tournament. Now, it’s on the verge of going extinct.
“It just allows you to win the highest-level tournament,” the South Boston native said. “There is no exclusivity to it. Everyone’s invited to the Super 8 if you qualify. It really is what kids aspire to. They aspire to get to the Super 8; they aspire to win the Super 8. Every season we talk about it as a team: our goal is to make it the Super 8, so it really is that special tournament.
“It’s trying to be the best of the best, and that’s not a bad thing for kids to aspire to, and I think that’s what’s getting lost in all of this. I know some of the terms that are being used are that it’s creating an elitist mentality. Well, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with kids aspiring to be the best?”
Impact on public schools
The biggest positive of the Super 8, several coaches concurred, is the doors it opens for the upstart public schools looking to make their mark against the state’s perennially elite. Whether a team is D-1, D-2, public, private or Catholic, it has a chance to make it in and bring pride to its hometown.
It even makes things better for the teams that miss the cut, Messuri said.
“It brings a lot of attention to the last three weeks of the season as teams try and jockey to get into the 1A tournament, and it also creates a better D-1 tournament for the good D-1 teams to be more competitive in,” Messuri said.
“I think if we go to one tournament, teams like Belmont and Walpole that were having memorable seasons this year that would have had a chance to win the Division 1 tournament, if there wasn’t a Super 8 then they probably would have been dusted in the quarterfinals or even earlier by one of the Catholics.”
“It’s less about winning and more about qualifying,” Flaherty added. “Just being a part of it. (Taking that away), I think that’s just doing a disservice to our sport and our student athletes.”
If the talks between the TMC and hockey committee are fruitless and the Super 8 does not return, some coaches fear history might repeat itself.
“If you look at the genesis of the original Super 8, a lot of public-school teams were going, ‘We can’t win this thing,’ ” Kuchar said of the bottleneck in the D-1 tournament in years pre-1A.
“Since you put in the Super 8, public schools are winning the Division 1 state championship (with the regularly dominant Catholic schools battling it out in the Super 8) and I think that’s a positive.”
With the new statewide playoff format and the very real possibility of not having a 1A, all D-1 teams would play in the same tournament. While that won’t change much for the dominant Catholics and public elites, it will be a much bigger hill to climb for the second-tier publics looking to make a state title-contending leap.
“You want to talk about fairness and equity,” Flaherty said, “how is it fair to a D-1 team to come in, in the first round of making the state tournament, and they have to play St. John’s Prep and possibly get pummeled by 10 goals?
“Is that really fair? Is that a memory we want high school hockey kids to have? That’s the side of this that hasn’t been looked at, like, what kind of parity is this going to create or what kind of disservice is this going to create?”
More than anything, the coaches lamented the potential loss of the Super 8 for their players the most, especially the ones that missed out on the chance to chase a 1A title this season, considering the year that they, and the rest of the world, endured.
“That’s who’s getting hurt here,” Flaherty said. “The student-athletes. It’s adults making decisions that are hurting student-athletes.
“If you’re talking about gender equity, then create a girls tournament. If you’re talking about sport equity, then create a lacrosse Super 8. But if you’re really talking about creating an elitist thing, then I’m sorry, that’s where I disagree. There’s nothing wrong with teaching kids to aspire to be the best and aspire to play against the best.”
No matter what happens, the ultimate prize might be subject to change, but the work to get there is not.
“I got a lot of messages from my players basically saying, ‘Coach, what does this mean?’ And I said, to be honest with you, the goal hasn’t changed,” Kuchar said. “We want to win a conference title; we want to win a state championship and we want to win a ring. That hasn’t changed. Just because it may not be under a Super 8 format, the objective is still the same.
“At the end of the year, we want to be one of the best teams in the state and play for a title, so that doesn’t change. We’re going to have to play the same teams we were going to have to play to get there anyways.”
