The re-vamped high school football playoff system coming into play this fall got a little more focused this week with the announcement of the division alignments for the tournament brackets.
Plymouth North and Plymouth South were placed in the 12-team Division 3 Southeast section, where they will compete for playoff spots with Silver Lake, Dartmouth, Whitman-Hanson, Pembroke, Dighton-Rehoboth, Nauset, Sandwich, Somerset-Berkley, Falmouth and Sharon.
High schools have until Jan. 22 to appeal their position, but Plymouth North Athletic Director Eric Foley said he expected his school would ?stay put? with its assignment. He said the school was placed fairly and that he was happy for continued games with local rivals like South and Silver Lake.
Plymouth South Athletic Director and Head Football Coach Scott Fry said he was fine with the school?s placement and was looking forward to next season?s changes.
The new playoff system, approved late last year by the MIAA, will allow for more teams than just the various league champions to get into the tournament, while also keeping the traditional Thanksgiving rivalry games intact. Playoff participation will be based more along the lines of other high school sports, where teams can qualify by winning or placing second in the league or putting together a .500 or better regular season.
Teams will play their league schedule for the first seven weeks of the regular season. That means North and South would start the season off with games against each other, Marshfield, Falmouth, Dennis-Yarmouth, Nauset and Sandwich and then one non-league opponent to be named later.
The next three weeks would have the playoff-eligible teams start playing tournament games. Schools in the South section were slotted by enrollment into one of six divisions. Eight teams from each of those divisions across the state would qualify for the playoffs.
Leagues with five or more teams would automatically qualify two playoff teams. Leagues with fewer than five teams would get one automatic spot in the tournament. The rest of the sectional bracket would be filled with the top wild-card teams, as determined by a power rating system. Playoff games, except for the state finals, would be contested on the home field of the higher seed.
Teams not making the playoffs would spend weeks 8-10 of the regular season playing in games set up by a scheduling committee leading up to the traditional Thanksgiving game in Week 11. A school will continue to play its regular Thanksgiving rivalry game on the holiday, meaning Plymouth North and Plymouth South will actually play against each other twice each season.
All six state championship games would then all be played nine days later at Gillette Stadium.
The fall of 2014 will bring more changes as Plymouth North and Plymouth South will move at that time from the Atlantic Coast League to the Patriot League, where they will begin competing against Silver Lake, Duxbury, Whitman-Hanson, Hingham, Quincy, North Quincy, Pembroke, Scituate and Middleborough. Hanover is in the league presently, but will move starting next fall.
E-Mail the reporter at dwolcott@wickedlocal.com and follow him on Twitter, @davidwolcott1.
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