Seeding high school tournaments

In Texas, brackets are set up geographically. Top three in each district go in (four teams in Class 5A). No. 2 teams face No. 3 teams in the first round; No. 1 teams get byes (or play the No. 4s in 5A). Everything is based on district finish. Each district has its own tiebreaker system in case of ties.

The drawback is there are no centralized tourney sites until you get to state (or region, in basketball and volleyball). Playoffs in baseball and softball are dragged out agonizingly slowly, with one round per week. The UIL state baseball tournament is June 6-9; then only seven weeks of summer till two-a-days.

I like it better in other states where you knock it out quick: district tournament one week, regional tournament the next, and state the next. Bada-boom, bada-bing. It would certainly open up a bigger vacation window.

 

small correction: I think New Jersey uses a point system for wrestling also, and actually seeds its individual wrestling based on past performance and head-to-head type of stuff. And in volleyball there's a committee that votes (both boys and girls) using criteria such as head-to-head and strength of schedule.
I think in individual tennis they have a ranking system as well.
But in most sports it is strictly W-L, like you said.

 

Western Mass. is a little different. Something called the Walker System, IIRC.

 

There are different set-ups regarding each sport here in Iowa. To keep this short, I'll use football, basketball, and baseball as the examples.

Football: in the largest class (4-A), the conference champs get an automatic bid (7 teams) and 9 get the at-large berths. There are four major conferences, but the three division winners in the Central Iowa league, the two division winners in the Waterloo-CR-IC league get automatics with the Western Iowa league winner and the Quad Cities conference champion. They spilt up the field into east and west (8 each) and then seed them according to records. If two or more teams in the same bracket has similar records, they use the points system, which I'm not going to explain now.

In the smaller classes, they have district football. Eight district champions and eight at-large (presumably the district runner-ups) will go. If there is a tie in district play, they go to a point system.

The problem with this is that some district champs end up playing each other in the first round, due to travel constraints. The smaller schools don't have a big enough budget to travel 3+ hours to face a lower-seeded opponent. Secondly, they used the alphabetical system to determine who hosts. The lower-alphabetical team will host the first round, then the higher-alpha team would host the second round. The next year, the higher-alpha hosts the 1st, lower-alpha hosts the 2nd.

In boys and girls basketball, all of the teams play in post-season. Before the season starts, the districts (1-A through 3-A) are drawn up and the teams are assigned, and the substate are done the same way in 4-A (since they take the 48 largest schools by attendance and assigned them 4-A status).

The Association takes the records of each team from games #5 through #15 or a cutoff date and then seed each team before the regular season concludes.

The smaller classes goes like this: 1st round districts --> dist. semis --> dist. finals --> substate --> state.
Class 4-A: 1st round Substate -->Substate semis --> Substate finals --> state.

Baseball and softball are done the same way like basketball.

 

NJ uses a points system for team wrestling and football, awarding points for wins and how large the school you beat was. For team swimming, its power points based on times in each event. For boys lacrosse its the laxpower.com rankings. I'll take digger's word on how the volleyball is done. However for the rest of the team sports, its done solely by record.
For individual wrestling, in each district the coaches gather and seed the wrestlers for the district tournament. Depending on if a wrestler finished first, second or third at the district, determines his sectional ranking. How he finished at sectionals determines the state championship ranking. For individual swimming and track, seedings for trials done purely on time. I think there's a committee to seed the individual tennis.

 

For Kentucky ...

FOOTBALL (SIX CLASSES): Eight regions per class, two districts per region. Top four teams in each district (largest district has only six teams, smallest has four, meaning all teams in the district qualify) advanced to the playoffs. 1-4 and 2-3 in first round, second round game at higher seeded team. Football is the only team sport in Kentucky where seeding is mandatory for the first round.

SOCCER, BASEBALL, SOFTBALL, BASKETBALL, VOLLEYBALL (ONE CLASS): With the exception of soccer, there are 64 districts with 4-8 teams each. Everyone advances to district playoffs. District playoffs consist, at most, of three rounds (quarters, semis, finals). Many districts choose to seed based on regular-season head-to-head play, but some do not. District finalists advance to eight-team single-elimination regionals (except soccer, which is a four-team regional). District champ plays a district runner-up in first round of regionals. Regional winners advance to State (excepted for Soccer and Baseball, which have Semi-State rounds). Of these five sports, only softball is double-elimination on the State level.

 

Suburban Pittsburgh? You forgot, it's the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League. After all, there's nothing in WPa. besides the Pitt suburbs, right?

A road geek wouldn't look so kindly upon Breezewood being called West Bumfuck, even though it is, for all intents and purposes.

 

I think Alabama should have a points system for every sport.

 

Three groups (further split into six divisions for football).

Football: Power ratings based on number of wins (more points for winning against bigger schools) with two points for every win that a team you beat gets, and one point for every win by a team that beats you. District champions get in, even if their ratings wouldn't let them otherwise. In my region it's not uncommon for a 9-1 team to not make the Division 6 playoffs because that's where most of the good programs are, and with the top two Division 5 teams from last year moving up, it'll REALLY be the case this year.

Basketball: Four teams from each district advance to regionals. Districts pair off in the first round; Butthole District champion plays Pee River District No. 4 seed, 2 plays 3, and so on.

Other sports: Two teams per district. Regular season champions get a top four seed and a home game in the quarterfinals (semis and finals at neutral sites). Seeds are determined by record in the region (so 20-1 Confederacy can be seeded below 18-4 Crap Log if all of Crap Log's losses came against out-of-region competition). Four second-place teams from each district get the 5-8 seeds, determined by record and also set up to avoid having two teams from the same district meet in the first round or semifinals (if the Oral Pleasure District champion is the No. 1 seed, then the Oral Pleasure No. 2 must be either a 6 or 7).

And there you go.

 

There is life outside of 495? Hi, Mert!

 

Doesn't even rate its own high school, wicked. West Bum-diddly-fuck.

 

New York is weird. Our paper covers two different sections and they do it differently.

In Section 1, the teams qualify by overall record but are seeded by league record.

In Section 2 the teams still qualify by overall record but the seeding is much more complex and goes by a point system.

Without going into great detail, this is the gist of it:
There are five classes, D-AA with D being the smallest. Say you attend a Class B school. Your team gets one point for a win over a team in your class, two for a Class A win and three for a Class AA win.
If I'm not mistaken you still get a point for scheduling a bigger school.

Both systems are flawed.