CHANGES COMING TO HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS

There will be some changes in the way high school football championships are contested in Hamilton this season.

In the Catholic school system, only one team instead of the usual two will advance beyond the city playoffs to the Golden Horseshoe Athletics Conference, the step before the OFSAA Metro Bowls.

However, an extra game — a semifinal — has been added at the GHAC level. So the local season has had to be shortened by a week to fit it all in. This means that rather than the customary playoff system, the quarter-final has been dropped.

After the regular season, the first-place team will play fourth, and second will play third with the two winners advancing to the championship, and the winner of that going to GHAC. The fifth-, sixth- and seventh-place schools will play in a Tier II playoff, but with no chance to go to a bowl game.

In the public system, the Tier I and Tier II concept has been abandoned in favour of one combined playoff. The top four teams in each of the two conferences will make the postseason, the bottom two won’t.

The winner of the public championship will go to the Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association (SOSSA) semifinal. If it wins that and the final that follows, it would qualify for the Metro Bowls.

This is the first year for a semifinal at SOSSA so the public season, as well, has had to add an extra week. It has done this by starting the season a week earlier than usual.