The Sorting Game : CIF Selects Its Divisions in Own Way

The rest of the country believes that a Californian is a person who can take something obvious and find a way to do it differently.

Californians don’t consider that eccentric, but progressive. Look, they say, here’s an idea that works better.

For example, the other states waste little effort dividing their high school teams into playoff divisions. A few states don’t bother themselves with it at all.

In Indiana, there are no playoff divisions in basketball. All qualified teams--private urban schools and schools from a wide spot in a country road, are lumped into one state tournament.

In most states, the procedure is cut-and-dried: The school’s enrollment determines its playoff group, in all sports.

A few states add one refinement: Private schools must compete in a division with schools of twice their enrollment, according to Warren Brown, assistant executive director of the National Federation of State High School Assns.

The straight enrollment system is quick and easy, but does it provide the best competition?

What about the league that wins its division year after year by huge margins?

What about a league that has marvelous water polo teams, miserable football teams and mediocre baseball teams? Is it fair that all sports be chained together on the basis of enrollment and face the same level of playoff competition?

Leave it to California to come up with an innovation. Brown said he knew of no other state that uses so elaborate a system.

California is believed to be the only state in which the same league can be assigned to compete in 5-A basketball, 4-A baseball and boys’ cross-country, but 3-A girls’ cross-country and tennis. That is the case in the Angelus League, which includes Servite and Mater Dei high schools.

In California, such diverse assignments are the rule, not the exception. If that seems awfully complex, it is.

The goal is to tailor playoff groupings not only on the basis of enrollment, but to take into account the level of proficiency in the different sports, according to Ray Plutko, commissioner of the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section.

Of course, making a harmonious arrangement for the section’s 478 schools in 62 leagues and 23 different sports is about as easy as solving Rubik’s Cube blindfolded.

Basing the playoffs on enrollment alone would be a lot simpler.

“I could do that in five minutes,” Plutko said. “This takes four months.”

When the Southern Section was under the direction of Commissioner J. Kenneth Fagans in the 1960s, it began to group schools according their strength in football, as well as their enrollment. Fagans said he was concerned about safety, trying to avoid having a very strong team injure players on a weaker team from a school of similar enrollment.

In the early 1970s, the process was broadened to allow caliber of competition to be a factor in groupings of other sports. The catalyst was Verbum Dei High School’s basketball dynasty, which for years dominated every division it competed in, despite its small enrollment.

Today, the process of assigning leagues to playoff divisions occurs every two years, after the leagues consider any changes they may want to make in their own memberships.

The Southern Section bases its playoff proposal on projected enrollments from school principals, changes in league memberships and suggested improvements in the groupings from league representatives. Section officials sent their first batch of letters to principals in December in the initial stage of this year’s process.

Leagues that think they may be improperly designated get two chances to appeal to a playoff committee before the section’s executive council votes on the proposals in May.

“If everybody got their way, we’d have two leagues in 5-A, two leagues in 4-A, two leagues in 3-A, and 47 leagues in 2-A because everyone wants to win a championship,” Plutko said, laughing.

Surprisingly, he said, the Southern Section receives few complaints.

In 1984, out of more than 1,400 assignments (62 leagues multiplied by 23 sports), Plutko said there were only 11 appeals from leagues.

Nonetheless, Plutko still hears a couple of familiar complaints, which are based on misconceptions.

“When it comes to be playoff time and school A is playing school B, they’ll say, ‘My enrollment is only 1,000 and theirs is 3,000, so why am I playing them?” Plutko said.

The reason, he explained, is that the playoffs are based on the average enrollment of all the schools in the league, which in this case, could be 2,300 students for each.

Another gripe arises when a league is moved up in the playoff groupings, from 2-A to 3-A basketball, for example. The schools toward the bottom of the league standings are generally heard to protest, “Now we’ll never have a chance to get anywhere in the playoffs.”

When Verbum Dei was bumped from 2-A to 3-A to 4-A, it often dragged less talented schools in its league along in its wake.

But the playoff formula is not concerned with bottom-of-the-barrel teams. It only considers the performance of the league teams that have made the playoffs in the past.

Plutko says the woes of the schools at the bottom of the leagues are a subject for realigning leagues, not playoff groupings.

“I could scratch out ‘5-A’ and write in ‘1-A’ over that league and they (the bottom teams) still wouldn’t qualify,” Plutko said.

So how do other states view the intricacies of California’s method?

Said Don Peterson, executive director of the Oregon School Activities Assn: “Of course, people say they (Californians) are different, and maybe they are.”