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For the third straight season, a Juniata County school will pay the price for success in the Tri-Valley League.
This time, it’s the Juniata baseball team, which has coach Nick Beward facing the choice of deciding whether to put an actual pitcher on the mound for a league semifinal game Wednesday, or start whoever he thinks can throw even marginally well and live with the outcome, preserving the team’s limited pitching resources for the District 6 Class AA tournament.
Which begins Thursday.
Since the final round of the relatively unimportant TVL tournament is Friday, and district play continues Monday, anyone who throws more than a handful of pitches is likely to get caught up in the PIAA’s inning rules for baseball pitchers.
In simpler terms, playing for the TVL championship could cost the Indians a shot at the state tournament.
Personally, I think Juniata should have told the league “no, thanks.” But if the school refuses to enter the tournament – even with a sound reason for making that choice – it will face sanctions from the TVL, which apparently thinks it is more important than the PIAA.
A quick recap: In the fall, East Juniata had to cancel at least one regular-season soccer game so it could take part in the PIAA boys soccer playoffs. A season later, Juniata’s girls basketball team was at risk of being booted from the District 6 basketball tournament because it had to play three TVL games after getting in its season limit of 22.
I had someone from a TVL school tell me recently that was the athletic director’s fault – that if she had scheduled properly, these situations would not have occurred.
That’s an insult to Juniata County AD Alyssa Wittle – and to the three TVL schools that are not in District 3 (Juniata is in District 6; East Juniata and Line Mountain are District 4 schools). Perhaps those three schools should remind the league that their districts do not operate on the same calendar.
Or, maybe the league should just get off its high horse and stop using its members as cash cows with unecessary playoff games.
Over the past few years, the TVL had playoffs at the end of the season in most sports only if there was a tie at the top of the standings – which made sense, since it’s a fairly small league (it’s a third the size of the nearby Mid-Penn and Heartland conferences) and any extra game usually had no negative impact on District 3 schools, which make up the bulk of the league but have an earlier cutoff to qualify for the large district’s tournaments.
Soccer – well, boys soccer – maintained a playoff, but for several years it matched either East Juniata or Greenwood against one of three Schuylkill League teams that counted their games against one another as TVL games, too.
If you’re scratching your head at this point, welcome to the club.
If all the teams played each other twice – home and home – it would be easy to determine who the champion is. Actually, most of the time, it’s that easy anyway. Susquenita is 11-1 in baseball; the rest of the league is, well, not 11-1. By at least three games.
It’s even easier to figure out on softball – where pitching rules admittedly do not matter. Millersburg is unbeaten in the league thanks to powerhouse pitcher Marlo Roadcap; no one else can match that in league play.
The TVL doesn’t have a playoff in football (which would have clarified Juniata’s league title, which was declared a tie because all the teams don’t play each other). But just try to interrupt the football postseason with a league event. I’m surprised they didn’t have a tournament for the four volleyball teams – hey, then everybody gets to go.
But no one has suffered like Juniata County due to the TVL’s playoffs. Perhaps Juniata County should rethink its league affiliations.
Jeff Fishbein is sports editor of The Sentinel. Contact him at jfishbein@lewistownsentinel.com.