A beautiful day on Saturday gives way rain, snow and slush today. Which gives me the perfect excuse to sit at the table and get this email out, as opposed, to say, doing any work outside!

Anyway, Pinkerton was a great host, to thanks to Peter, Deborah and their crew! We had a minor snafu with the buzzers, partly due to the fact that my brain wasn’t screwed on right and I had to go back to Salem, but despite the delay I think everyone had a good time.

Before I get to the important stuff, coaches, please watch your email in the next week or two. There will be three things coming to you. One, our end of year survey, in which we want your feedback! And, two, scheduling info for our annual spring coaches meeting, in which we will, among other things, discuss the schedule for next year, so if you think you might want to host, please let us know! Lastly, I’ll be sending out reminders about the “New Players” Jamboree at Merrimack on Star Wars Day. (May the Fourth be with you!)

Okay, that out of the way, here are the results. We had 11 schools on Saturday. Stevens volunteered to “play down”, to make an even 10 for the varsity bracket. And we had 14 teams in the j/v tournament. Some of us have really deep benches! Hopefully you’ll have lots of kids to call up to varsity when you graduate your seniors! This is our free-for all at large tournament, so whoever wins (if you haven’t already won a region) gets a bid to the state tourney. Two teams finished at 9-1, but Merrimack already has an invite by virtue of winning Div III, so Plymouth wins the final automatic bid to the tournament. Congrats to the Bobcats!

This was also the final shot for points, and here’s how the rest of the tournament went:

At-Large Tournament: Pinkerton 3/9/19
Varsity			J/V
Pymouth*	9-1		Merrimack	9-1
Merrimack	9-1		Fall Mtn.	9-1
Kingswood	8-2		H-B	8-2
Fall Mtn.	6-4		BG	7-3
PCA	6-4		Kingswood	6-4
H-B	6-4		PCA	5-5
BG	3-7		Pinkerton	2-8
Coe-Brown	2-8		Stevens	1-9
Pinkerton	1-9
Salem	0-10
*Tournament Winner

The final standings look like this:

Overall Season At-Large Standings
Tournament Winners			Varsity Points standings			J/V Points Standings
Div I	Hanover		Fall Mtn.*	26		Fall Mt.	40
Div II	John Stark		BG *	23		Merrimack	35
Div III	Merrimack		Kingswood*	21		BG	32
Div IV	PCA		Hollis-Brookline	13		PCA	20
At-Large	Plymouth		Salem	6		Plymouth	14
			South	5		Hollis-Brookline	14
			Stevens	4		Kingswood	10
			Coe-Brown	2		Pinkerton	6
			Pinkerton	1		Lisbon	4
			Colebrook	0		Salem	3
						Stevens	1
			*At-Large Qualifiers

So, that means the final bids to the tourney go to Fall Mt., BG and Kingswood! Congrats all!

Fall Mt. claimed the trophy for year’s best J/V performance as well! Way to go!

The state tournament will be held at the Legislative Office Building in Concord on April 7th. As usual, that’s a Sunday. We have the rooms beginning at 1:30, so as soon as everyone has arrived and settled, we’ll begin. We may be looking for some readers, so if you’re a coach who’s team didn’t make it this year, and might be interested in reading at the tournament, reach out!

It’s been a great season, guys, and I hope everyone had a great year. I’m already looking forward to see what next year brings! New questions, for one, and hopefully some new teams as well!