[Cactus Jack]

I loathe the idea of forcing a team to play everyone in their region once.

That would destroy good mountain teams like the old Paintsville, Clay County, Harlan, Elliott County or Shelby Valley teams that needed to play tougher schedules to get ready for a run at state.

It would also hamper getting their kids more exposure.

I will say that I was initially ambivalent (at best) to the 15th's "super region", but since I've seen it in action, I actually like it.

these teams schedule 30+ games a year and only half of those would be region games. It’s not like they couldn’t schedule whoever they want the rest of the year. If you’re playing a round robin region for seeding you only play each team once. No home/away. You’d just alternate

Yea... lock in 15+ games of your schedule when you'd probably only play a maximum of eight to ten games against the rest of your region if you weren't forced to. This year's Harlan County team would have greatly benefited from having Barbourville, Lynn Camp, and OBI on the schedule.

Plus everyone else is going to be locked into games against their own region that they don't want to play, so they'll have less flexibility too.

It'd probably only do two things-- hurt the overall quality of match-ups and ensure that the Christmas-time tournaments were loaded because that'd be the only time good teams could feasibly schedule one another.

Let's also not forget about make-up games for weather cancelations and either doing trips across the region (have fun driving from Letcher County to Powell County on a Tuesday night) and getting to school/practice the next day or needing to lose a better gate for one of your weekend games to play when the travel logistics work better.

There's also a scheduling disparity for the larger regions with a larger number of teams. Some of the metro areas (where two-plus hour travel times may not be an issue) have 18+ teams.

Maybe it works if they add to the total number of games you can play in a season and make some stipulations. Example: if you could choose to forfeit regional games and play other teams instead... if you are loaded enough to make a run at state, you're still going to win the 13th-16th regardless of seed and/or there's not going to be a discernable difference in your path or who you need to beat to get there if you are the #4 or #5 seed instead of the #1 seed.

I still think it's a terrible idea to force even more games between schools who really shouldn't be playing each other anyway. But if the goal is to decrease the total number of member schools (by beating the ones no one really wants to play senseless), then it's probably a good idea. Smaller private schools at the bottom of regions will probably have trouble getting enough kids out to field a team or drop halfway through the season due to lack of players once they get tired of being injured or beaten 60+ over half their schedule.