On March 3, officials, teams and fans were sent scrambling as the Central Coast Section was dealt a major curveball. The power went out at Independence High School in San Jose, one of the sites for the section’s championship basketball games. Those with jurisdiction over the events quickly packed up and moved operations to neighboring Piedmont Hills, with the second half of the Girls Division II Championship between Aragon and Valley Christian completed at the new site, along with the other three games. In all, delays lasted only an hour.
On Oct. 13 and 14, 2017, football games across San Mateo County and Santa Clara County were unplayable due to air quality conditions caused by the North Bay fires. The section acted quickly and moved those games to the end of the season, used a one-week scheduling gap to adjust the playoffs accordingly, and business went on with very few bumps in the road.
Cut to Veterans Day weekend, 2018. Once again, smoke from fires, this time in Butte County, has jeopardized the status of football games, but unlike in prior years, they were not handled with the same level of organization and efficiency.
Yes, there are far more scheduling constraints in this season’s schedule. Heaven only knows how the CCS and other sections would have tried to fix last year’s situation if there wasn’t an extra gap in the schedule. A conference call between the commissioners of the CIF’s 10 sections adjusted the playoff football schedules, moving everything back one week and allowing for flexibility with each section. Ultimately, 16 of the 20 CCS quarterfinal football games have been postponed by a week, but it’s how the teams got to such a solution that’s caused so much frustration.
Teams like Burlingame and St. Ignatius were in inconvenient but simple situations. Burlingame was given plenty of advance notice that the Division IV Quarterfinal against Mountain View would be delayed, first from Friday to Saturday, then to Monday and finally to the following Friday, set to kick off exactly one week from the original start time.
St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart Prep had similar ease. The teams knew on Saturday morning that they would be unable to play Saturday afternoon, and the game was rescheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at nearby Sequoia due to SHP’s lack of lights. Shortly after 11 a.m. Monday, all parties involved were informed that the game would be postponed again, this time to the following Saturday, a week after the original scheduled start time.
Though it appears that the 16 games will ultimately be played a week after their original start time, a few have reached their current state only after massive headaches. Sacred Heart Cathedral was set to travel to Morgan Hill on Friday to face Live Oak in a rematch of last year’s thrilling Division III Quarterfinal. That game was initially pushed to Saturday, and then on to Monday, and with much better air quality conditions on the southern end of the section, it appeared the game would be played.
Even as other games around the section were postponed, including the SHP-SI game that will provide the semifinal opponent for the winner of the game between the Acorns and Fightin’ Irish, all plans were to carry on with Monday’s game at 6 p.m. at Live Oak.
Shortly after 3:30 p.m. on Monday, with his team’s bus 20 minutes away from arriving at Live Oak, Sacred Heart Cathedral head coach Barry McLaughlin was called and informed that the game was being canceled once again by the section. It will now start on Friday at 7 p.m., exactly one week, two re-schedulings and a wasted three-hour round trip on a bus after it was initially scheduled.
Live Oak head coach Mike Gemo and other parties involved were monitoring the air quality situation throughout the day, and when readings in Morgan Hill rose to 156, the section informed the teams that the game would have to be called, rather than trying to wait out the situation. Unlike the North Coast Section, which forbids playing games with air quality levels above 150, the CCS has no official limit, but 150 has been used as the unofficial mark.
While other games in Santa Clara County were nixed later than the San Mateo County games, one was still set to go: a Division II matchup between Christopher and Valley Christian. In fact, even with all other games in the area postponed, that one wasn’t called until 5 p.m. on Monday, an hour before the game was set to begin.
Obviously, these issues are trivial when compared to the situations faced by those affected in Butte County and the health matters all across California that are affected by the air quality. Those things certainly can’t be controlled by the Central Coast Section. But what can be controlled is the manner in which these situations are handled. Once some of the games on Monday were postponed, the rest of them should have been moved as well. There was no reason for Sacred Heart Cathedral and Live Oak to be preparing for a game when their next opponent wouldn’t be determined for five days. Likewise, Valley Christian and Christopher should have never been warming up once all of the other games had been set aside if it wasn’t an absolute certainty that their game would be played.
Again, these matters are insignificant when compared to the life-changing devastation caused by the fires, but nonetheless, they could have been handled better. The CIF has come to the decision to postpone NorCal and state championships by a week, which should allow games to get back on track, but the past few days have seen a waste of time and resources, not to mention an absolute logistical nightmare for players, coaches, officials, parents and other fans.
