As long as margin of victory plays a key component in the power ranking structure used by the MIAA to seed teams in the postseason, there will be those who criticize the MOV.
The controversial topic reared its ugly head once again at Tuesday’s MIAA Soccer Committee meeting. Longtime Wayland boys soccer coach David Gavron generated a healthy discussion when he touched on the subject during the coaches’ representation segment of the hour-long meeting.
“A lot of the coaches feel it is problematic when we are worrying about getting bench players into the game when we are having to worry about the three-goal differential because of the rankings,” Gavron said. “To be honest, we do worry about getting the right score so we don’t get hurt in the rankings. Does that mean we are not doing a good job by the players?”
MIAA Soccer Committee chairman Danny Erickson has long been against the MOV component. While he believes the MIAA does need to commit to the statewide tournament, they need to know that there are many cons to the new system.
“Kids are not getting into games directly because of this,” said Erickson, who is also the athletic director and boys soccer coach at Canton. “I find it comical that anyone (at the MIAA) would argue this because it’s absolutely happening. It’s important to keep this discussion going because there are a lot of really good coaches who want to do the right thing and are being put in a difficult situation.
“I applaud a lot of the hockey coaches. There are games when they are down a goal and have to decide whether to pull the goalie. If you pull the goalie, the odds of giving up a goal are higher (in which a two-goal loss would hurt you in the rankings more than a one-goal setback), but pulling the goalie is what you are supposed to do and kudos to those hockey coaches who are doing it.”
The MOV was one of three subjects Gavron touched upon in his discussion. He said coaches feel there might be a need to differentiate between whether a yellow card was distributed due to a tactical foul or an aggressive dirty foul when it comes to team totals for the season. Erickson felt that since so few teams were near the yellow card limit, there doesn’t seem to be a need for change.
He addressed the concern shared by many schools, not just soccer, in that some teams are hurt by the fact they compete in a weak league and don’t always have the opportunity to schedule tougher nonleague opponents because they are committed to playing league games.
MIAA assistant director and soccer committee liaison Steve Dubzinski acknowledged it is a problem and specifically mentioned a football school which competed in a weaker league and wound up missing the tournament.
While Dubzinski didn’t mention the school by name, he was clearly referring to Everett, who didn’t qualify for the Division 1 state football tournament in 2023 despite a 7-1 record. What hurt the Crimson Tide was the fact that they competed in the Greater Boston League in which most of its schools compete at the Div. 3 level or lower and struggled there, thus depriving Everett of a chance to earn more power ranking points.
In the area of infraction reporting, Dubzinski said that while three schools reached the team limit for yellow cards (16) during the regular season, none exceeded the total which would have meant no tournament play for the guilty schools.
The committee did vote unanimously to establish dates for the 2025 boys and girls soccer tournament. The cutoff date will be Oct. 30 with a bracket release scheduled for Nov. 1. The tournament would then start on Nov. 3 and go until the state finals on Nov. 21-22.