OK, I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Softball is not a big enough deal on North Meridian to raise a blip on the radar screen. I'm not going to say the IHSAA doesn't care about Softball, but they really don't care about Softball. Their bread is buttered with Football and Men's Basketball. Where they currently have Sagarin Ratings. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but the IHSAA, and Bobby Cox is on the record as stating, is committed to the blind draw in ALL sports. Now if they're that committed to it in Football and Men's BB, where pretty much all of their revenue is generated, that's the way it's going to be.
The other thing to keep in mind, the IHSAA doesn't receive any revenue from the sectionals. IF, there's anything left after paying all the bills the participating teams split it. Their revenue is generated from the regional, SS, and Final's rounds, where seeding is pretty much irrelevant, or at the very least not talked about. How many times have you heard people talking about the SS winner will be determined in the opening game or the afternoon game, yet no one talks about seeding it.
Our sectional would be easy to seed, since it's basically our conference less two teams, and we have a conference tournament two weeks prior to the sectional. Other sectionals may not be that way. You live in a metro area (Nobelsville) where everyone plays everyone else. In rural areas that may not be the case. Then you'd be looking at common opponents and that's a horrible gauge of how good a Softball team is. We beat X, who beat Y, therefore we're better than Z. While we fail to mention that X had a choir concert that night and brought their JV team.
Personally, as someone who's dealt with the IHSAA from multiple angles for the last 35 years, I'd be the last person in the world to defend a lot of what they do. I'm not sure where I stand on the blind draw thing. But it is what it is, you're going to have beat the perceived big dog in the sectional at some point, as a coach it doesn't matter to me whether it's the first game or the last. We play whoever they tell us to play and when they tells us to play them, I don't care. And before you ask, in my tenure, we've never been a favorite, and we've drawn one of the favorites every year I've been here, this year is no exception. We'll play them in game one for the third time this season, hopefully we'll get to play them tonight for the second time.