Contrast that with Jamestown's schools, which are only 95 miles away from Ashtabula, Ohio, if they were ever inclined to play a football or basketball game there. But that trip would be derailed if the travel proposal passes, because Ohio does not border New York.
Cream of the crop penalized
Admittedly, the Ohio example doesn't apply to very many schools, although Aquinas has had to play some football games there in recent years because Section 5 ADs can never seem to find their planning calendar when the Little Irish call to try to schedule games.
Football scheduling in the state is notoriously tight and will get worse if the proposal to shorten the regular season for many sports is approved; a six-or seven-week regular season (instead of seven or eight) will leave fewer teams with non-league dates available, a concern for more than just Aquinas.
Even Canandaigua had to accept games with Camden from Section 3 and Slippery Rock, Pa., last season just to fill out its schedule.
Other travel is less out of necessity than it is the result of ambition. We have lacrosse teams that have been known to travel to Maryland and Massachusetts, two other hotbed states for a sport that many New York schools play exceedingly well.
Similarly, there are only so many places for Saratoga's superb girls cross country team to run in its neck of the woods without bumping into Shenendehowa, Guilderland, Colonie, Shaker, Burnt Hills, Queensbury and Averill Park ad nauseam even before racing most of them at sectionals, states, the Federation meet and the Nike Cross Nationals qualifier in consecutive weeks.
The Streaks have ventured during the regular season to meets like the Brown Invitational in Rhode Island and the Great Amercan Cross Country Festival, which is returning to Cary, N.C., after a three-year stay in Hoover, Ala., in a bid to challenge themselves against similarly elite programs.
Those trips, as well as basketball junkets to Myrtle Beach, Florida and California taken by any number of NYSPHSAA member schools would fall by the wayside. (I assume the Fayetteville-Manlius girls could still go for a fourth straight Nike Cross Nationals championship in Portland, Ore., because the event is a "club" competition after the H.S. season concludes, not a varsity sport.)
