Bryson City – Congratulations you just made the NCHSAA 1A Volleyball Playoffs! The downside for the #9 West seeded Lady Devils, a 4 hour one way trip to Denton North Carolina to face #8 Midwest seed South Davidson.
In the new NCHSAA playoff process, implemented this year for all team sports, except football, wrestling and tennis, the 64 teams with the best overall 22 game winning percentage will participate. Once those 64 are selected, they are then divided into 4 regions, East, Mideast, Midwest, and West with 16 teams in each region. Regular season and tournament champions (if different) are automatic qualifiers, and seeded first, followed by the remaining qualifying teams.
Then the West and Midwest are folded together, just like the East and Mideast. So the #1 seed from the West will play the #16 seed from the Midwest, #2 West will play #15 Midwest and so on until the bracket is filled.
Swain fell victim to loophole in the procedure. Teams from a split 1A/2A conference that are the highest finishing 1A school, regardless of finish, were awarded as if they were conference champions. By doing so these, teams are seeded with conference champions first, before the remaining schools, and thus seeded ahead of the other remaining schools.
In this year’s draw, Swain fell to #9 in the West, while Avery and Alleghany, both from split conferences, were automatic qualifiers and seeded with teams like Hayesville, Community Schools of Davidson and Hiwassee Dam. Those last three schools were their respective conference champions.
Swain’s 4 hour, one way trip, will be on the upper end of travel time for this first round, but travel time for these 1A schools in the first round will still be the biggest issue of these playoffs.
Think about it this way, Swain will travel 8 hours on Wednesday for their first round game. The winner of that game turns around on Thursday and plays at the winner between Hayesville and Bishop McGuinness. So, if Swain were to win, they would travel another hour and half (one way) to play their conference foe Hayesville. But if South Davidson wins, they will travel over 4 hours to potentially play the #1 seeded Yellow Jackets. And of course if Bishop McGuiness and our Lady Devils were to win, then we are talking about another 4 hour plus trip for one of those teams.
Travel is and will continue to be a big issue for 1A schools, who simply do not have the budget to be able to travel these distances. The shortest trip for all of the 1A Western portion of the state in the first round is 1 hour and 37 minutes for Cherryville and North Stanly. The longest is 5 hours and 23 minutes (and that is one way!) for Hiwassee Dam and Chatham Central.
The biggest factor with these long trips is safety. In most of these cases a coach will teach a portion of the day (which started at 7ish for most of them), then drive a bus 3 or 4 hours. Coach their team, then get back on the same bus and drive 3-4 more hours to get home.
At Swain this safety factor has become such a big issue, that the school system gets a charter bus for any trip over 3 hours. Of course, the cost then becomes a factor. But at this point, the safe transport of our players and coaches is the most important thing, and we choose to deal with the cost in whatever way we can. Every school may not be able to handle this adverse travel the way Swain does.
Best of luck to all teams participating, and here is hoping for safe travels for each of you!