Projo GameTime Blog

Jim,

Great call, someone needs to step up and resolve this issue. I believe the problem lies within the RIIL, most are former students of these schools. The RIIL needs to give all schools small and large a chance to compete. We all know these schools' recruit through their BOOSTERS.

Will someone step up!!

Could not agree more ... nice story Jim !! I wonder if any of this will ever sink in with the RIIL ?!?

I disagree completely. Tiverton defeated Hendricken and La Salle this year in the Basketball Playoffs. Portsmouth defeated St. Rays twice this year, and La Salle once. Cranston West won the Division 1 Tournament. This proves that public schools can definately compete with private/catholic schools. In fact, public schools usually target their games against Hendricken or La Salle as as games they want the victory in the most. The new system for Basketball is great because it allows the small schools to have their championship tournaments and compete with the larger schools in the State-Wide Tournament. Hockey may be a different case, because quite obviously the upper echelon in Division 1 are private schools and the Public Schools do not stand a chance against them. The other divisions are different with great competition, especially Division 2. That system may need to be changed i agree because of the dominance of Mount, but the Basketball system is fine the way it is. There aren't enough Private schools to form their own league and in Basketball the private/catholic schools may be good year in and year out, but there are always Public Schools with the talent to defeat them, year to year it is harder to keep a Public School team at a high level, but there are always a few teams who are very talented, i.e CW, NK, NP, Rogers, Tiverton, Portsmouth, Central, ect. who can and did beat the Private schools.

I don't think its fair to draw an analogy between VA and RI high school sports. A quick google search of the independent and catholic championships offered in VA indicate that between 20-30 teams compete in these championships each year in VA, for instance swimming http://www.pvswim.org/hsresults.html. If that were the case in RI then I would be all for separate championships, but it is simply not. In all of RI, there were fewer than 25 male swimming teams competing this year with only a handful being private/catholic, so I don't think a VA to RI comparison is in any sense fair. Public schools may have an uphill battle against catholic schools who draw student from all over the state, but they can and do compete. Just look at South Kingston tennis for an example.

Smithfield, a public school, had 11 wins in the 2009-2010 season (second most wins in the division) this was prior to the ten team division and every school was played three times. Smithfield beat every private school, some more then once, except for Mount which they lost 4-2, 4-2 and 4-1. If that is not a completive public school I don’t know what is.

People need to give these public schools a chance to build a program and it may be a little more cyclic then the private schools but I think these kids should be given the opportunity to compete in the highest level of Hockey in RI without having to pay to get there. Realistically most families especially in today’s economy do not have the means to send the kids to private school.

PC basket ball is a great example they play in one of if not the toughest conference in America. Should they not compete in the league because they are not a year in and year out powerhouse like UConn.

Maybe RIIL should look at something similar to basket ball where you have your division regular season winners and then have one overall State Champion.

I would rather have my son compete with the best and not win a championship then play in another division and run the table.