Back to normal?
CIF-SS Commissioner Rob Wigod hopes high schools can get back to a semi-regular routine.
July of 2021 was a pause to take a deep breath.
The CIF Southern Section and its schools had just come through an unprecedented period, cramming an entire school year’s worth of athletic competition into five months while adhering to COVID-19 protocols and weirdly timed seasons — an entirely different definition of “spring football,” for example — and forging collaboration and consensus in order to survive.
So, I asked Southern Section commissioner Rob Wigod at the start of our traditional August sitdown interview, how confident was he that things could back to a normal state in 2021-22?
Or maybe I should have rephrased it. Can there be such a thing as “normal” going forward, when schools are still dealing with infection rates and testing and game cancellations, as happened to Mater Dei and Corona Centennial at the very start of the football season?
Normal is as normal does. Wigod noted that the plan was for a full regular school year’s worth of schedules, football and girls volleyball and boys and girls cross country in their normal places on the calendar, with the rest to follow in their appropriate spots, with the necessary protocols in place.
But, he acknowledged, there’s hope mixed into that plan. Outbreaks in various school districts already this month should be a reminder of what we’re still dealing with.
“We all understand there may be some things that will come going forward,” Wigod said. “Hopefully (we’ll) keep our programs viable, keep them out there, deal with the mitigation that we may have to deal with, but not see ourselves shut down our schools or our sports programs.”
That said, getting through the stress and uncertainty of the last school year and being able to give students that opportunity to play, in whatever form, was an accomplishment that should never be minimized. Instead of consternation about who gets the gym when or how many buses to reserve or which coach gets which multisport athlete, coaches and administrators recognized the greater goal and made it work.
“Between May 21st and June 19th we had 19 sports for boys and girls going on,” Wigod said. “We had over 100 divisional champions crowned and over 2,000 playoff games that took place. That all speaks to the level of cooperation (and) collaboration ... If you’re really trying to keep student-athletes first and give them opportunities, (to) do everything you can for them, then you’re flexible. You are going to be more openminded. You’re going to try to make it work where and when you could make it work.
“... Our student-athletes didn’t need to hear about how difficult it was going to be. They’ve been through enough. They don’t need to know about how it’s all being done. They just want to play, and let’s do our job as the adults. Let’s do everything we need to do. We don’t need to make a bunch of noise about it. And let’s come through and deliver for the student-athletes. And I think that’s what we did.”
That can-do, let’s-collaborate spirit probably will continue on campus. Will it filter down to parents in all cases? Wigod said he wanted to believe “that there’s a heightened appreciation for education-based athletics,” but that might change the first time somebody’s kid gets benched.
On another note, you can be pretty sure the griping will begin in earnest after the football games of Oct. 29. That will be the final Friday of the regular season, and shortly after that the newest item in the Southern Section’s toolbox will be unveiled.
Remember competitive equity, the playoff bracketing system that used recent years’ results to try to match teams on relatively equal footing? This year it goes to the next level. The brackets will be based solely on this season’s performance, which is where the system was supposed to end up all along.
It has been used to a degree in individual sports like swimming and tennis, and Wigod said current results were used to select Division 1 in boys and girls water polo. But football is the big test and probably the ideal one, since it only works if every result is reported in a timely fashion. If it works in football, it will be used in other sports as well.
“If you’re going to use current regular season, you can’t leave any game out,” Wigod said. “That could potentially change power rankings (and) where people belong.”
The weekly section power rankings on calpreps.com will be the final word, based on records and strengths of schedules. At the end of the regular season, the first 16 on that list will go into Division 1, the next 16 into Division 2, the 16 after that into Division 3 and so on. With 14 divisions, that’s 224 out of 375 teams playing 11-man football who will qualify for the postseason.
The numbers don’t lie and there shouldn’t be consternation, except maybe from some coaches who have gotten used to anticipating potential playoff opponents and now have to recalibrate. But there may be some confusion among the public. Imagine your team winning a league championship but having to open on the road against a runner-up from a stronger league. Or multiple section champions from a particular league.
Or, say, a Mater Dei-St. John Bosco matchup before the section finals. It probably won’t happen but it could, because it will be No. 1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, etc., based strictly on the power rankings. Those who have been following along will get it, but ...
“I’m sure there’ll be some people who wake up on Bracket Day, take a look at our bracketing and go, ‘Oh, this can’t be right,’” Wigod said.
Of course there will. Some might even be St. John Bosco or Mater Dei fans.
But maybe some folks should be reminded that there is life, and lots of it, beyond Division 1. Wigod recalled a conversation with a coach who pointed to the banners in his gym and, noting that they all said Southern Section champions, said: “Nobody cares what division number’s on there.”
“I can only say, when you see those celebrations and you see them ordering their championship rings and you see them putting the banner up in the gym, it doesn’t matter what division it is,” Wigod said.
In other words, all section championships are created equal.