Woodbridge, Central sneak into DIAA Football tournaments, Eagles earn top seed

DELAWARE – After a lengthy discussion about rules, regulations, tie-breakers, and technicalities, the DIAA Football Committee agreed to send three Henlopen teams to the Delaware football playoffs Sunday morning.

Smyrna is the top seed in Division-I, and will face Sussex Central in the semifinals Friday at 7PM.

This will be a rematch after Smyrna engineered a fourth quarter come-from-behind victory in Georgetown on November 6. The Eagles scored 14 unanswered points in the final period to remain unbeaten.

The Eagles ran through their competition, finishing a perfect 6-0 while scoring 264 points. The 44 points per game scored by Smyrna was the best mark in all of Delaware. The 100 points allowed were the third-fewest in Division-I in 2020.

Sussex Central faced a deep hole early in their season, staring at a 1-2 record after they also fell to Caesar Rodney, 16-14. The Golden Knights rebounded with a 4-0 record to close out the season.

The winner of the game will play either Middletown or St. Georges.

Woodbridge is the only Henlopen representative from Division-II.

The Blue Raiders sneak in as the fourth seed, and will play the top seeded Archmere Auks in Claymont.

This is the sixth-consecutive playoff appearance for the Blue Raiders, who are coming off of a one-point defeat in the Division-II state championship last November.

Woodbridge rebounded from losing out on their first two games of the season due to COVID-19 cases found in the school. The team reeled off 5-straight wins to close out the season 5-0, with a 4-0 record in the Henlopen South.

The team from Greenwood is one of the most well-rounded in the state, having scored 162 points while allowing 10 in their five contests.

The first hour-and-a-half were full of discussions centered around the Delmar Wildcats.

To make things interesting, it was announced that officials in charge of deciding who would be the Henlopen South champion decided to not make a decision at all. The committee deciding Saturday night that they would let the football committee decide who makes the playoffs from the South.

Delmar lost out on three of their games – Woodbridge, Lake Forest, and Laurel – all due to COVID-19 protocols, including their week 7 match-up with the Bulldogs. As a result the Wildcats were left with just four games on schedule, one short of the required five to be considered for the state tournament.

According to the rules approved by DIAA, that also meant Delmar would not count toward their opponents schedules.

If those rules remained in place, Caesar Rodney would then lose a win, dropping them to a four-win team, causing Smyrna and Central to each lose a bonus point. The ripple effect would have kept the Golden Knights out of the playoffs.

Eric Torbert put forth a motion in the opening minutes of discussion to allow the Delmar Wildcats to be eligible for playoff consideration, but not for their games to count for their opponents. The motion was carried by a 14-1 vote.

After back-and-forth arguments regarding whether to count Delmar’s games on their opponents records, a motion was brought to revert back to the original text, which would make Delmar ineligible once again. That motion was defeated by a 5-8 vote with two abstaining.

John Wilson, head coach of the St. Georges Hawks, was one of the opponents to changing the rules.

Central’s Dr. Bradley Layfield disagreed, saying there was a ripple effect of not counting the games that had been played.

The argument was decided after a 13-2 vote to waive the requirement for a five-game schedule to qualify for the tournament and to have a team’s games count.

Once the technicalities had been hammered out, the task at hand was to sort out the Division-II race.

Red Lion, Woodbridge, and Delmar, as it turned out, had all finished with identical 4.0 point indexes. Because none of these teams had played each other opponents wins became the tie-breaker.

Red Lion received the three seed, having 18 opponents wins. Woodbridge came in next with 13, Delmar left out with 11.

But what about the fact that these three teams played different numbers of opponents.

Former Concord Raiders head coach George Kosanovich, winner of 255 high school football games, chimed in on that topic. He made the point that if you divide the number of opponent wins by games played, Delmar would then jump ahead of Woodbridge for the fourth seed.

A motion was brought to consider amending the tie-breaker to be opponents wins divided by games played, but failed.

A motion to approve the bracket with opponents wins as the tie-breaker was then made and passed, 13-2.

The decisions made by the committee were difficult ones that were not made lightly, but there were still questions raised at the end of the meeting during the public comment period.

Hodgson athletic director Dave Collins said he had kids texting him asking why they didn’t matter. The decision to reverse course and allow Delmar to be eligible and to count their games had kept the Silver Eagles out of the playoffs, despite the fact that they had defeated St. Georges by 16 points in early November.

Delmar head coach David Hearn said he appreciates the hard work put in by the committee, but was still disappointed by the fact that his team was left out of the playoff field.

“We’re just a victim of scheduling… It’s just hard to understand what season means to you.”