Updated: March 24, 2005 - The Section Five Executive Committee met on March 3rd and again on March 23rd and decided to combine Class B and Class C into one tournament for 2005. Class A will also have a tournament.

This year, the annual enrollment figures (BEDS) classified 3 teams into the Class B group, which has enrollments between 450 and 999 students. Current Section Five policy requires four teams in order to have a tournament. Although both Geneva and HF-L had requested permission to move up from Class C to Class B for this year, it made no difference.

Section Five Coordinator, Mike Simon, and his committee have been working since November to find a format that would be acceptable to the Executive Committee and at one point it seamed that a one year exception might be made.

At any rate, the final decision calls for 14 teams in the Class A Tournament and 14 teams in a B/C Tournament.

Because the NYS Tournament requires A, B and C class teams, Section Five needed to determine a team in each class who will move forward in the NYS Tournament. The winner of the Class A Tournament will represent Section Five in Class A. The Class B team and the Class C team that advances the farthest in the B/C Tournament with move forward as well.

Who Will Advance?
A new "NCAA type" bracket has been prepared which will keep the five "B" teams separate from the nine "C" teams until the final game. Both teams in that B/C championship game will move forward into the NYS Tournament, but only the winner will be the Section Five (B/C) Champion.
   
What About the Future?
The 2006 BEDS enrollment figures show at least five Class B teams for 2006, and so it is anticipated that there should be three tournaments in 2006.

Schedules and Brackets
In the Class A bracket, the top two teams will receive a bye in the out bracket and will play their first games in the quarter final round. In the B/C tournament the lowest seeded teams on the "C-side" will play a pigtail game on May 18th and the winner will have to play the top seeded team on the next day (May 19th).