Unless there are enforcement issues, the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association couldn’t care less about district baseball tournaments. Its simple bottom line is to have a No. 1 and a No. 2 from each district for the region tournaments.
How those two teams are determined is up to the individual districts. They could go by regular-season standings or use a variety of tournament procedures.
The Chattanooga area has a variety of formats this year, including single- to double-elimination, pure double-elimination or a single-elimination process that leads to best-two-of-three series between the semifinalists.
District 5-AAA, which begins tonight at Bradley Central, is trying something new but has the second- and third-place teams meeting for their first tournament game in a seven-team district. While regular-season champ Walker Valley was accorded a bye, No. 2 Soddy-Daisy and No. 3 Ooltewah will meet Thursday.
“There was a split among the coaches on how we were going to do the tournament. Everyone saw both sides of it, and at the end of the day everybody decided we wanted to do something different,” Soddy-Daisy coach Jared Hensley said. “It’s crazy. It is probably the most unorthodox double-elimination tournament that’s ever been drawn up.”