I do not have any WPIAL archival information, but I am updating my PIAA history today. I will post it on The Record Book and link to a blog post.

A couple corrections:

Glen Mills ran 41.34 (not 41.74) for the 4x100m in 1996. At that time, it was the State Meet Record. Harrisburg ran 41.14 in ’98 to eclipse that record.

Also, Nick Crits (not Grits) from Wissahickon won the 1600m in 2008.

I can’t think that the track relay situation happens very often … alternates are usually available.

I think that the proposed football preseason rules reek of unnecessary bureaucracy.

Jeff Fishbein’s ideas for your site seemed great to me.

I, too, have had less time to devote to HS football in PA (and at the other levels) than in any other year. My third brain tumor in the last 9 1/2 years has had a great deal to do with that. I popped out of the surgery with some minor memory deficits, but I can at least speak and move everything.

CD was extraordinarily lucky in winning all of those close games en route to its state title last season, and I said that they’d never do it again. Perhaps, this will be Harrisburg’s year…

I like your new idea, though, and think you could greatly fill a niche where the PIAA site comes up short at times. For example, it would be nice to have a convenient, one-stop set of links to the current cycle qualifier charts. And to recent brackets — not just this year’s, or the ones from 3-6 years ago that PIAA has on its archive site, but the last year or two that are not found there.

Just my $.02.

As Jeff noted in his reply, the football calendar was decided back in December when the Board failed to approve a reduction from 16 weeks to 15 weeks. The reduction was favored by PIAA staff, about one-half of the PIAA districts and most of the non-district reps on the Board.

But it needed 21 affirmative votes on the Board and received just 17. And that was the end of the matter. In fact, the feeling among the BOD is that 16 weeks will be around for at least two more two-year cycles.

Possibly some of the changes among Board members will re-ignite this, but I’m pessimistic about it. Dr. Lombardi is powerless, as was Brad Cashman, to do anything about this matter other than draw up the brackets.

As to basketball, the Board had two bracketing options and chose to stay with the traditional brackets, primarily because it wanted to avoid two teams from the same district playing in the opening round. On the other hand, that does occur in Class AAA and Class AAAA where the District 7 champ plays the 7-6 (in AAA) and the 7-4 (in AAAA) in the opening round.

The PIAA did wisely rid itself of the play-in games, which for the most part was a wasted round, both in terms of qualification and expense, although Penn Wood, the No. 9 AAAA boys team out of District 1 in 2010-2011 reached the PIAA semifinals.