New London — The words of a wise man: "If you are interested, you'll do what's convenient. If you are committed, you'll do whatever it takes."

This is the difference between the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic  Conference, the state's governing body of high school sports, and the Eastern Connecticut Conference, the overseer of our corner of the world. The CIAC is interested in equity and competitive balance. The ECC is committed to it.

Until the CIAC overhauls its framework, imbalances across playoff divisions in every sport will sprout like weeds. The CIAC's one-size-fits-all, enrollment-based precepts ignore the details that would create more competitive balance. The ECC offers a better blueprint, the latest example of which illustrates the power of delegation, cooperation, effort and organization.

Volleyball in New London has never been a needle-mover in the school or community. Yet the Whalers are among the best stories of the fall, already having won their division of the ECC for the first time in program history. The coaches and kids were all smiles at practice the other day.

If the ECC's divisional models adhered strictly to enrollment numbers, New London would be noncompetitive in the Large Division with East Lyme and Fitch. Instead, the ECC structure allows for more data driven conversation about program strengths and weaknesses. The Whalers are in a smaller division. The program is growing because of it.

"I have been over the moon happy and excited with this season," said coach Missy Parker, who joined the program seven years ago coaching the freshmen. "The emotion I've felt this year have been incredible. Our motto is 'todo o nada.' All or nothing. Leave skin on the court. They do it day in and day out."

And Parker knows the ECC has helped immensely.

"We don't have a feeder program," she said. "Enrollment-wise, we would be in a higher division. We don't have a middle school team. We don't have a rec league for the kids. They don't play AAU or travel. They're coming in here thinking it's phys ed volleyball. Putting us in a division where we have a fighting chance is so, so important."

Senior Yari Ortiz: "I've played all four years. The first few years were tough. But this has been fun. It's nice to create relationships with people you hadn't been friends with before. Such a great experience."

We can get Utopian here and talk about sports through the prisms of enduring life lessons and metaphorical richness. All true. But everything flows better when a fair baseline allows for, as Parker said, "a fighting chance." And winning.

"New London volleyball is an example of how success leads to building a program," said Ledyard assistant principal/athletic director Jim Buonocore, who is instrumental in league scheduling. "As a league that used to be strictly enrollment based, New London volleyball would have never been able to come up for air. Scheduling this way, with competitively balanced divisions, has been the key to keeping our league together."

How does the ECC do it?

"We just scheduled the 2022 fall season," Buonocore said. "We begin sport by sport based on enrollment numbers. Then the sport chairs (each ECC athletic director is in charge of at least one sport) have some time to gather information. Things like how many participants in each school's program. How many levels. Success rate. Returning players. Graduation hits. Then we have the ability to reset the alignments. Based on the information, we have the ability to move a school up or down a division."

Buonocore said sport chairs must get school approval to move a program up or down more than one division. Division alignments are revisited every year, allowing for new information and changing circumstances.

"Most of the time," Buonocore said. "there's a ton of communication going on."

This is where CIAC needs to pay attention. I get that it's easier for the ECC — with 19 schools as opposed to the entire state — to discuss the vagaries of each program. But the ECC offers a blueprint here to create and implement an entirely new system through networks of people to create more equitable playoff divisions.

Essentially, the CIAC, a compilation of its member schools, has coaches, athletic directors and administrators from its member schools to contribute. Chairpersons for each sport would be responsible to create networks that gather information about individual programs that would lead to better divisional placement. Information such as graduation, transfers in, transfers out, injuries, coaching changes, participation levels and any other relevant factors.

I didn't say it would be easy.

"There's a lot of extra work," Buonocore said. "But at the end of the day, you are doing what's best for kids. That's why we're here."

CIAC officials may be left to answer questions later this fall about how technical school cooperatives are altering the integrity of the football playoffs. There are annual questions about competitive equity in many other sports that the CIAC's "success multiplier" and one-size-fits-all mathematical formulas just don't address. It's time for change.

The ECC can be a beacon to the rest of Connecticut. It's not all about enrollment. It's time CIAC began to consider other factors. It's about being committed, not merely interested.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro