About 10 miles up the Susquehanna River from Selinsgrove sits the borough of Milton, a town of about 7,000.
The school’s field hockey team plays in Division II of the Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference. These are small towns and small school districts, and the division includes two co-op teams; Muncy-Montgomery, and Benton-Millville.
Milton finished its season with a record of 7-10 and, as the second-place team in its division, could have played in the PIAA District 4-Class AA Tournament for a berth in the state tournament.
It didn’t. When the brackets get released for District games this week, Milton won’t be in the field.
The reason can be found in the team picture on the school’s website: the boys on the team.
You see, Milton has taken the road less traveled when it comes to the new PIAA rules which were meant to try to start boys’ field hockey teams. Instead of barring boys from playing, Milton has allowed its field hockey varsity to play together and grow as a team.
Only now, with the playoffs looming, Milton has decided not to jettison its boys, who helped the team to its best record in several years.
It might be easy to say that the Black Panthers aren’t doing this out of principle; the bracket features long-time powers like Selinsgrove and Mifflinburg, and up-and-coming teams like Bloomsburg, and only two teams make it into the state tournament.
The odds aren’t great, but that’s what competition is all about. There will be questions about whether Milton could have vaulted into contention for one of the two state tournament berths, even as a sub-.500 team.
Too bad, because of PIAA rules, that we’ll never know.
TopOfTheCircle.com 
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