Field hockey: Official HWS seeds, pairings

The fifth annual Hunterdon-Warren-Sussex tournament gets underway on Saturday with two pigtail round games.

Here's this year's complete schedule:

Pigtails on Saturday, Sept. 28 at the higher seeds, with the winners advancing to the eight pre-quarterfinal round contests on Saturday, Oct. 5 at the higher seeds. The quarterfinals are slated for Saturday, Oct. 12 at the higher seeds with the semifinals to be played on Saturday, Oct. 19.

The championship game will be held on Saturday, Oct. 26 on the turf at Hackettstown's Morrison Field, provided it's a neutral site. Voorhees posted a 1-0 win over High Point in last year's title game, the Hunterdon County school's second HWS championship and its 10th county title overall.

On Saturday, North Hunterdon travels to Wallkill Valley and North Warren will visit Pope John in the two play-in games. Those winners move into next Saturday's slate of first-round games. The higher seeds will host up until the championship game.

Note: Power points -- for only a team's first seven contests or up to games including Wednesday's cutoff -- were used to determine seeds. Teams also gained residual points for any wins accrued by opponents they defeated up to that school's first seven games. Head-to-head results were applied only to teams seeded directly above and below each other, as in the case of Kittatinny and Newton, which lost to 3-1 to the Cougars on Tuesday.

Top bracket

8B-Delaware Valley (1-4-1, 38.75) at 1A-High Point (6-0-1, 89.5)
5A-Kittatinny (2-3-1, 51.5) at 4B-Warren Hills (3-3-1, 70.5)
6B-Belvidere (3-3-1, 56.25) at 3A-Lenape Valley (4-1-1, 71)
10B-North Hunterdon (1-4, 19) vs. 7A-Wallkill Valley (3-4, 46) winner at 2B-Voorhees (5-2, 96.5)

Bottom bracket

9B-North Warren (1-4-1, 20) vs. 8A-Pope John (0-7, 19) winner at 1B-South Hunterdon (7-0, 127.5)
5B-Hackettstown (4-2, 61.5) at 4A-Vernon (4-3, 62)
6A-Newton (3-3, 58.5) at 3B-Hunterdon Central (6-1, 88)
7B-Phillipsburg (1-4-2, 41.5) at 2A-Sparta (4-2, 72)