Air quality postpones postseason schedules
Lincoln football coach Phil Ferrigno, a true extrovert, was trying to muster enthusiasm Thursday afternoon before his team’s practice.
He wasn’t even sure there would be a practice.
His Mustangs (10-0) had been scheduled to host Balboa in a San Francisco Section semifinal playoff game Thursday, but it was postponed because of the poor air quality that continues to linger from the Camp Fire in Butte County.
The semifinal games are now scheduled for Friday, with the winners meeting Thanksgiving Day in the annual Turkey Day Game.
But if the air remains smoky and the semifinals are delayed another day, the title game will likely not be played on Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. The section requires Air Quality Index readings to be below 125 to play games; At 5 p.m. Thursday, a purpleair.com monitoring station a dozen blocks from the school recorded an AQI of 309.
Last year’s playoffs were delayed by bad air quality in the aftermath of the North Bay fires.
“It doesn’t look good,” Ferrigno said of possible Friday games. “We were feeling pretty good (Wednesday), because we thought things were clearing up. Instead, the air got worse. All we can hope for are giant gusts of wind.”
Ferrigno was one of more than 100 Bay Area football coaches and administrators, along with thousands of high school players, waiting for the skies to clear.
The Central Coast Section on Thursday postponed all of its Friday football games and committed to a contingency plan of playing its 15 quarterfinal games at five sites in the Salinas/Monterey region.
The tripleheaders all begin at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Late Thursday, the Oakland Section announced that its semifinal playoff games — Castlemont at McClymonds and Oakland at Oakland Tech — have been moved from Friday to Nov. 24, with the Silver Bowl championship game now set for Dec. 1.
The North Coast Section has 19 quarterfinal games scheduled for Saturday, but the prospects of those being played grow dimmer by the day.
Both the CCS and NCS need to get through three rounds of playoffs by Dec. 1 to determine section champions. If the NCS can’t, a coin flip between the finalists would determine which teams advance to the Northern California title games.
NCS Commissioner Gil Lemmon said he’ll do everything in his power to avoid that.
“If they don’t get played, then we’re going to have to look at Monday and if not Monday, then Tuesday,” he said.
CCS coaches are thankful their section reaches south to King City, where AQI readings are much lower.
“It’s a great plan and we’re happy to be playing football,” Serra coach Patrick Walsh said. “It’s fantastic the schools and section came together. … At the same time, what’s a little concerning is playing a game with the intensity a CCS playoff requires without practice.”
Most teams in the region haven’t been able to even practice outside.
Serra hasn’t practiced on the field since Nov. 7, instead doing drills in the gym.
“Your concern is keeping necks and shoulders in football shape,” Walsh said. “We can keep in physical shape, but not getting that daily contact is a concern.”
Two NCS Open Division teams, Pittsburg and LibertyBrentwood, haven’t had game contact since the last week of October. They’re scheduled to play Saturday in a semifinal game.
St. Patrick-St. Vincent of Vallejo coach and athletic director Lane Hawkins was mapping out final plans for his team’s Division 4 NCS game at Moreau Catholic-Hayward on Saturday when he got word Thursday that his school was shut down. That meant, by school rules, practice had to be canceled, too.
“I’ll have to get to the team later,” he said. “There’s a lot of juggling going on. Us football coaches like our routine and when things are constantly changing, it just throws us off.”
The CCS announced that its cross-country championships, scheduled for Saturday in Belmont, instead will be run Sunday at Toro Park in Salinas. The NCS cross-country finals are still scheduled for Saturday at Hayward High, but likely will be postponed.