When the pandemic is over, here's a way to keep meaningful regional games

The last year has seen plenty of changes to the world of high school sports, not only in New Hampshire, but around the country.

Heck, they're playing football right now in Massachusetts, and it's strange seeing it in my social media feeds.

From athletes wearing masks while playing, to rules on high fives and handshake lines, to how many people are allowed to sit in a row of bleachers, to how many media people are allowed into a gym, a full list of the things that have been different about the last year could go on and on for a while.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed so much in the Granite State, it even led to a championship game - the Division III wrestling final - being held on a weeknight, a status that, of all the sports sanctioned by the NHIAA, is usually limited to just girls lacrosse.

With all these changes due to safety protocols, its reasonable to assume all of it will go back to somewhat normal when the rest of the world gets as close to that point as it can. But is there anything that's been implemented in the last year that should remain?

I think we're all pretty much tired of wearing the masks at this point (but we still should), although given the lack of colds I've had, the hand sanitizer is going to stay in my backpack and I'll probably remain aware of keeping socially distant at events.

But there is one thing on the field that was emphasized this year that, I think, should stick around - regional play.

Say what you will about how the brackets were put together for field hockey and girls volleyball and basketball, but the fact that they were structured so teams in close proximity were playing important games made them more intriguing.

Just look at the road that Bishop Guertin and Winnacunnet had to take to make the final four. The Cardinals had to play Nashua South, Nashua North and Alvirne, all three top rivals, in less than a week, while the Warriors had to go to Exeter and Portsmouth to get to the semifinals.

And imagine if there had been a full house for each of those games ...

By no means am I suggesting the NHIAA change its postseason format and make the path to the playoffs go through specific regions. All you have to do is look at that Winnacunnet-Exeter game in the preliminary round to see why that doesn't work for a tournament that's supposed to crown the best team in the division.

Those were likely two of the four best teams in the division and one was eliminated in its first game. Meanwhile, a one-win Merrimack team was hosting a game in the same round on the other side of the state.

But what if there was a way to get those regional matchups within the structure of the regular season and make them have a little more meaning than a regular-season game? I think there might be. Let me explain how.

My first job out of college was a newspaper in the town of Corbin, Ky., where football was a pretty big deal, but basketball was the king.

At that time, basketball - and every sport other than football - wasn't divided by class or division. Every team was broken up into a region and a district, regardless of the size of the school, so when you had a team that made it to the state Sweet 16 - as one team in the coverage area had done the year before I got there - you hung a banner up in the gym.

The other thing the KHSAA does is give the small schools their own mid-season tournament to participate in within their own region. They call it the "All-A Classic" and the schools within each region spend about a week or so playing a tournament of their own to determine a regional champion.

The postseason here is already broken down into divisions based on school size, and this isn't a pitch to change that. But what about a mid-season regional tournament that included every team in the state? Would that be doable?

I took a look at what this could possibly look like for boys and girls lacrosse. Please remember, this is not something that is happening, or proposed to happen; it's just something I made up for fun.

In a normal year, the NHIAA requires that lacrosse teams play a minimum of 12 games, typically all against teams within your division. The maximum of games is set at 18, so that leaves each team with six games it can add to its schedule.

So let's turn those six extra games into a regional statewide tournament.

There are 50 boys and 49 girls lacrosse programs in the state, and couple of those teams like to use those extra games to schedule out-of-state opponents. Let's give those teams the option to opt out of the regional tournament, and for this exercise, let's say its both Bishop Guertin and Pinkerton teams.

So that leaves us with 48 and 47 teams, respectively, that I've broken down into eight regions that we can then combine into four super-regions. Here they are:

Boys

Northwest

• North: Plymouth, Kennett, Inter-Lakes/Moultonborough, Gilford, Kingswood, Laconia.
• West: Hanover, Lebanon, Stevens, Kearsarge, Hillsboro-Deering, Keene.

East

• Southeast: Londonderry, Salem, Windham, Timberlane, Oyster River-Newmarket, Coe-Brown.
• Seacoast: Spaulding, St. Thomas, Dover, Portsmouth, Winnacunnet, Exeter.

Central

• Queen City: Derryfield, Manchester Central, Man. Memorial-West, Trinity, Bedford, Goffstown.
• Capital City: Concord, Bishop Brady, Merrimack Valley, Bow, Pembroke, Hopkinton.

South

• Gate City: Nashua South, Nashua North, Merrimack, Alvirne, Campbell, Pelham.
• Southwest: Milford, Souhegan, Hollis Brookline, ConVal, John Stark, Monadnock.

Girls

Northwest

• North: Belmont, Kennett, Inter-Lakes/Moultonborough, Gilford, Kingswood, Laconia.
• West: Hanover, Lebanon, Kearsarge, Hillsboro-Deering, Plymouth.

East

• Southeast: Londonderry, Salem, Windham, Timberlane, Oyster River-Newmarket, Coe-Brown.
• Seacoast: Spaulding, St. Thomas, Dover, Portsmouth, Winnacunnet, Exeter.

Central

• Queen City: Derryfield, Manchester Central, Man. Memorial-West, Trinity, Bedford, Goffstown.
• Capital City: Concord, Bishop Brady, Merrimack Valley, Bow, Pembroke, Hopkinton.

South

• Gate City: Nashua South, Nashua North, Merrimack, Alvirne, Campbell, Pelham.
• Southwest: Milford, Souhegan, Hollis Brookline, ConVal, John Stark, Keene-Monadnock.

So how would it work? There's a number of ways it could go, depending on what you want. If you wanted to play a full state tournament, you could randomly seed teams within each region - I've heard that somewhere before - and then take the regional champs and play a final four.

But then what do you do with the teams that lose in the first round? Unless they're scheduling games against each other on the fly, they sit idle while the tournament continues.

A better idea would be to play everyone in your region once, and whoever ends up with the best record - or rating, however you want to determine it - is the region champion. By doing that, games could be mixed into the regular-season schedule without having to take time off to play a tournament.

Then the two region champions within each super-region could meet in a one-game playoff.

Or something like that.

Like I said before, this is not something that's being considered by the NHIAA or the lacrosse committees. It's just a little fun project that I put together and would like to hear what you think about it, so feel free to let me know in the comments.

Now, back to solving the rest of the world's problems ...