Just a couple of things as we finished up our developmental spring season and head into the last week of our regular season for JV/Varsity.  With respect to the developmental season we will recognize our tournament champions and with respect to the JV/Varsity season we need to talk about unplayed games and leading into the playoffs.

It was a brutally hot day yesterday but I enjoyed seeing everyone out there playing such competitive soccer.  Thanks for taking some time out of your weekend and joining us.  I want to especially thank everyone from St. Kilian that helped set up the fields the night before and helped make sure things ran smoothly the day of.

I don't get to watch nearly as much soccer as I would like to during these tournaments, but I saw a lot of great play across the board and a lot of really talented teams that didn't manage to qualify for the semi finals or finals in their brackets.  I wanted to give a shout out though to all of those teams that played before recognizing the ones that brought home hardware.

First Grade – St. Kilian White – Champions, Sacred Heart Red – Runner Up and St. Bede and Sacred Heart Black qualified for the semi finals.

Second Grade – Sacred Heart Red – Champions, St. Kilian Black – Runner Up and St. Kilian Green and Blessed Seelos qualified for the semi finals.

First/Second Grade Combined – Guardian Angel – Champions, Our Lady of Fatima – Runner Up and St. James and Alpha Yellow qualified for the semi finals.

Third Grade – St. Kilian Green – Champions, Aquinas Gray- Runner Up and Aquinas Navy and St. Bede qualified for the semi finals.

Fourth Grade – St. Kilian Green – Champions and Sacred Heart Black – Runner Up

Third/Fourth Grade  – Guardian Angel – Champions, St. James – Runner Up and Mary of Nazareth and Holy Cross qualified for the semi finals

JV Girls – Aquinas – Champions and St. Kilian – Runner Up

Varsity Girls – Aquinas – Champions and Holy Cross – Runner Up

Congrats to all of the above teams and congrats to everyone who was able to participate yesterday.  I'm already looking forward to next Fall.

The regular season is just about wrapped up, this is our last week to get in any regular season games and then we move into the Championship Series.  The format and rules will be very similar to what they have been in the past.  Below is a brief summary, but I will give more details out as we get closer.

If your bracket has 6 teams in it, the top 4 advance to the playoffs and every team plays in a semi final game with the winners advancing to the championship round.

If your bracket has 5 teams in it, the top 3 advance.  The 1 seed gets a bye into the championship game and the 2 and 3 seed participate in a play-in game.

The days of the tournament will be Friday June 4 through Sunday June 6.  We will be playing at Seton LaSalle High School on Friday and Saturday and at LaRoche College on Sunday.  Once the tournament schedule is posted, it is final, if your team is unable to participate because of conflicts then the next highest seeded team step up and the bracket would be rebalanced.  To the extent that you are aware of any school or diocese conflict that impacts your ability to field a team in the tournament you should let me know ASAP.  I cannot guarantee I can make accommodations for everyone, but I can tell you that I always try and that I do give priority to accommodating diocese/school conflicts in the order that the requests are received.

Before we can figure out the logistics of post season play, we have to determine who qualifies, and in order to figure that out, we have to talk about unplayed games.  I want to first thank all of the coaches, coordinators and referees for all of their efforts this season.  This weather was beyond frustrating and I have personally witnessed how hard you all have worked to try to get reschedules in.  We are at that point in the season though where I can see that the amount of games yet to be played very likely exceeds our time frame to get them all in.  I am going to ask two things from the JV/Varsity coaches and coordinator:  

1)  Take a look at our webpage (pittdsl.org) and make sure that things look accurate for your team and that you aren't missing any game results.  If there is an error this is the time to catch it.  If it isn't caught before playoff pairings are announced, it may be too late.  Any questions, let me know

2) At the end of this email I will include a list of all games that I still have as unplayed (or at least not uploaded to our website– also, this list does not include games that I know were scheduled for this week when my schedule was initially distributed, or ones for which I understand score cards are being uploaded tomorrow.)  If your team is listed below as having an unplayed game, let me know whether (i) it has been played, but you just need to upload a score card, (ii) if it has been rescheduled and for when, (iii) if you are still working on a reschedule (and if you want my assistance on that), or (iv) if it is a forfeit and who forfeits (if its the other school that is forfeiting, please include them on the email).  This will allow us to get a better picture of what is going on and it will also allow us to announce the postseason much more quickly.  

All Game Cards should be uploaded the day that the game is played this week and if you play on Sunday, that game card needs to be uploaded by 9pm on Sunday in order to count for league standings.  All games for which game cards have not been received and which have not been clearly designated as forfeits by either me or the coaches, will be scored as not played, which results in both teams getting zero standing points for that match.  Standing points will not be prorated so if you have only got 6 games in your team will be at a disadvantage when compared to those that have gotten all 8 in.

My list of potentially outstanding games is as follows (and the teams are listed in no particular order so don't assume that the home team is the first one listed). Apologies if some of this has already been relayed to us, but with as kinetic as this schedule has been this season, I'd rather get it twice than miss it entirely.  Also, if I've missed an open game, let me know that too:

CDTA v HS

HS v CDTA

HS v OLF

CDTA v HS

HS v CDTA

MNZ v SH

MNZ v SH

BTA v MOM

BTA v AMA

AMA v BTA

BTA v GAA

BTA v AMA

AMA v BTA

AGS v SB

BFS v SB

PHA v AA