District 3 approves new power rating system in limited form

The District 3 approval gave its thumbs up Wednesday to a new power rating system that will used to determine district playoff qualifiers.

But there's a catch. According to this Patriot-News report, the system will only apply to football, soccer and field hockey in the fall, at least for now.

Basically, it looks like the committee has chosen to give the new format a bit of a test run before applying it to all sports.

As outlined in our Jump post this morning, the new format is meant to reward teams for playing tougher competition and minimize the importance of classification in scheduling opponents. Under the old system, teams were effectively penalized for playing schools that were of a lower classification, regardless of whether the opponent was good or not.

We'll try to get some local reactions as the week goes on. For now, this system seems, in theory, to be an upgrade over the current format. We'll see how it works come the fall.