Henlopen Football
- Thread starter 84rider
- Start date
I'm going to show my age a little bit here. In the early days of the State Tournament there wasn't a point index or format in place. The at large teams were selected by a committee and those bids seemingly went to the upstate schools. The Henlopen schools were often left out due to "strength of schedule". This helped create a lot of the Upstate / Downstate mentality. Some may remember it this way, some may not.
RR is a idiot, don't let him get to you. He has threatened to leave this site at least 5 times and never come back, one can only hope......
vert, you are so right. When we had the 4 team tournament with no point system it was amazingly unfair. The way the first 4 tournaments were structured was that the Flight A Champ got an automatic bid, the Flight B Champion got an automatic bid and the Henlopen got an automatic bid. I don't remember how the Henlopen Champion was determined. Maybe the league named their rep. There was one at large team that was picked by a committee. In the first tourney(1971) Wilmington as A, Middletown was B, Dover was the Henlopen representative and Laurel was chosen as the at large team. (St. Marks only went up to 11th grade at that time and didn't play Salesianum in 1971).
Salesianum was angered because at 7-3 they thought they were better than Laurel. ......but the Sals lost their last 3 games of the year to Baltimore Poly, Malvern and got waxed the last game of the year by Middletown.
For the next 3 years of the 4 team one tournament arrangement (1972-1974) the winner of the Salesianum-St. Marks game got into the tournament as the At Large Rep. I believe that a couple undefeated Henlopen teams were left out. (I think Milford was one of those teams.) Finally, in 1975 we got the Division 1 and Division 2 breakdown and then expanded each tournament earlier this century.
I am a big fan of the point system** and playing a tough schedule. I believe that every D1 champ since 2005 has played Salesianum during the regular season. I will stand corrected if somebody remembers differently.
vert, you should have seen the craziness over who was #1 before the tournament. I will bore people with that stuff another time.
** for the record I am a fan of the Electoral College.
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Thank you for your confirmation. Even when they went to the two division format (at least in the early years) a committee still picked the at large teams. I was a junior on a 9 - 1 Sussex Central team whose only loss was to CR 15-8 ( I think they went undefeated ). I remember that St. Marks got one of the at large bids at either 8 -2 or 7- 3. If my memory holds, I believe Newark beat CR in the final. I think I recently read that prior to this years championship that the Henlopen South had won the D2 title 16 times. I also enjoy the D1 - D2 argument and thought there were a few times that the D2 winner was indeed the best in the state. The 89 or 90 Caravel team (sorry bad memory) comes to mind, the 92 Dickinson team and IR in 2011. If my years are off I apologize. For the most part the thought of a D2 team being the best in the state is unrealistic. It can make for some interesting conversation though.
In my honest opinion, I don't think the 2011 IR team could beat the 2011 Newark or Middletown teams. It sure as hell would have been a great game to watch, but like most D1-D2 games, the D1 team will tire out the D2 team by the 4th qt. and run away with it
vert, I know the point system was in by 1980. I remember tracking all of the points on an accounting spread sheet. It was before laptops. Back then there were still ties. Teams got 3 points for a tie against a D1 team and 2 points for a tie against a D2 teams. In your career did you work many tie games??
I never worked a tie game. I did work when both coaches had to agree to play the tiebreaker at the pregame conference when it was a non conference game.
