State-game changes look to be artificial

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It’s that time of year again. Time the state’s top teams wait for all year. If they’re good enough, and lucky enough, they’re among the few left to chase those lifetime memories that come in the form of state high school championships.

So across the state, kids are getting ready. As you read this, they’re hopping on buses and heading to Augusta or Northport or Gorham. They’re shaking out their road-weary legs.

They’re thinking about the lessons they’ve learned all year.

And in some cases, they’re throwing those lessons right out the window. In some cases, the things they’ve learned over the past two months will do nothing to prepare them for what’s to come.

Item: The state’s top Class B soccer teams will disembark at Point Lookout Field in Northport today to play on one of Maine’s premier athletic facilities.

Point Lookout, in case you didn’t know, has artificial turf.

More on that later.

Item: Last weekend, the top four volleyball teams in the state headed to Machias for the state championship final four.

They put on quite a show. They bumped. Set. Spiked. And eventually, after a best-of-five match, Woodland emerged with a title.

Interesting point: There are only two times Maine’s high school volleyball teams play best-of-five matches: 1) When they have to, in the Maine Principals’ Association-sanctioned state tourney; and 2) when both coaches agree to do so during the regular season (which rarely happens).

The rest of the time, teams play best-of-three matches.

More on that later, too.

Item: When the state’s best high school cross country teams show up at the University of Maine at Augusta today for their championship meet, runners will run on a tough, hilly course.

Runners will be asked to run 3.1 miles over hill and dale, through mud and muck, and (here’s the important part) do exactly what they’ve been doing all year long.

Novel concept, huh?

But why not make these extremely fit and fast distance runners really test themselves? Why not make them run four, or five, or six miles? Why not really find out who’s done the most training, and is the toughest?

Why? Because they haven’t done it all year long. And because it wouldn’t be fair.

In distance running, that fact becomes immediately apparent.

In other sports, it’s not nearly as clear-cut.

Let’s start with volleyball. In best-of-three matches, volleyball is a sprint. Get some momentum, ride it, and anything can happen.

A best-of-five match provides a truer test, and is the way things ought to be. All … season … long. Foisting that format on players only in the postseason? That deserves another look.

Now let’s get back to soccer.

Artificial turf is an easy target, of course. For years people have stood on the sidelines and complained about the evils of fake grass.

That’s not the argument here.

There are, in fact, sports that scream for an artificial turf intervention.

Field hockey, for instance, is an entirely different – but absolutely better – game when played on turf. Take the bad hops off the assorted potholes and hillocks on a typical high school field out of the equation, and the sport’s athletes are allowed to shine. For the record, those state finals are being played on grass, though most of the rest of the field-hockey-playing world prefers to play the game on artificial turf.

FieldTurf, the Northport facility’s artificial surface, is a high-tech wonder, people say. That’s undoubtedly true.

But are these soccer teams ready for it?

We’ll soon find out.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter. His e-mail address is jholyoke@bangordailynews.net