Baseball: Another embarrassing seeding meeting

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The City Section’s philosophy of letting coaches directly involved in the playoffs put together the playoff seedings produced a major embarrassment Saturday for the junior varsity baseball tournament.

The representative for the West Valley League, Jon Beckerman of Woodland Hills El Camino Real, didn’t show up for the meeting, so the remaining coaches left Chatsworth, the second-place finisher in the league, out of the 16-team tournament, and seeded league champion El Camino Real No. 9.

Chatsworth has played in the JV final the last two years. In fact, the JV final has matched West Valley teams each year. Did the coaches really think two West Valley teams didn’t deserve selection? It showed that the coaches didn’t care about a true seeding.

Now it’s up to City Section Commissioner Barbara Fiege on Monday to decide what to do about leaving Chatsworth out of the JV tournament.

It wasn’t much better at the varsity seeding meeting, where the coaches seemed more concerned about who they didn’t want in their bracket and protecting schools in their own league than ranking the top teams.

The boys’ basketball coaches removed coaches last year from participating in their seeding meeting, and the other sports should do the same.

-- Eric Sondheimer