Selection Process Slights Southern Section Athletes : Track Coaches Lament State Meet Entry Limits

The 70th CIF high school track championships begin at Cerritos College in Norwalk today, yet many of California’s top distance runners, jumpers and throwers will not compete.

That’s because the CIF’s Southern Section--the state’s largest section with 479 schools, is allowed only five representatives in each event at the state meet.

Though the Southern Section comprises 42% of the high schools in California, it is allotted only 18% of the entries in the state meet. Five entrants are the most allowed among the state’s 10 sections, and the Southern Section consists of more than three times as many schools as any other. The North Coast Section (144 schools) and the Los Angeles City Section (49) are allotted four entrants each per event.

The unequal balance between population size and representation leaves many talented athletes viewing the state meet from the stands.

“It’s a brutal system,” Notre Dame Coach Jon Mack said. “It’s frustrating as a coach when you’ve got a 6-8 high jumper sitting at home and the City Section sends a kid who has jumped 6-2.”

“It’s not fair,” Rio Mesa Coach Brian FitzGerald added. “But I’m not sure what the solution is. I haven’t really studied the current situation in detail.”

Agoura’s Bryan Dameworth is a prime example of the selection inequity. The 1987 state Division I cross-country champion ran 9 minutes, 6.88 seconds in the 3,200 meters at the Southern Section Masters meet at Cerritos last week, but he placed seventh and failed to qualify for the state meet.

But Craig Lawson of Granada Hills placed fourth in the City Section championships in 9:30.5 and will run in the state meet.

Christy Stubbs of El Camino Real qualified for the state meet with a fourth-place finish of 11:40.4 in the girls’ 3,200 at the City finals. Westlake’s Jennifer Feller ran 10:58.25 in the same event at the Masters meet but did not qualify for state.

Rosie Dominguez of Verdugo Hills qualified for the state meet with a fourth-place finish in the girls’ shotput (35-1) at the City championships, but Annette Noel of Agoura threw 38-8 1/2 at the Masters meet and won’t compete this weekend.

Although inequities such as those occur annually, Southern Section coaches are slow to offer proposals for change.

“It’s basically just accepted,” said Steve Spraker, Saugus’ cross-country and distance coach for 13 years. “There hasn’t been any big effort to change things.”

“Every year, we gripe about it,” Mack added. “But we’ve never gotten organized.”

State CIF Commissioner Thomas Byrnes admitted that the qualifying procedures for the state meet are flawed but said they accomplish their goal.

“We’re not running an invitational here,” he said. “We’re trying to determine the top six athletes in the state in each event and I think we do that. If the Southern Section ever swept the first five places in an event, they’d have a legitimate gripe to be allowed more entries. But that’s never happened as far as I know.”

Byrnes also said that the state meet was designed to include representatives from all the sections, not just the historically strong ones.

“It’s sort of like the Olympic Games in a certain aspect,” he said. “Every section has its integrity and wants to be well-represented in a state championship event.”

Southern Section officials had proposed a plan that would have increased the number of entrants in each event at the state meet from 28 to 36, with the Southern Section being allotted six entrants. But the proposal was defeated at the CIF’s Commissioners meeting in Oakland last September.

“There were a lot of reservations from the Northern California sections,” Southern Section administrator Dean Crowley said. “Because the state championships are scheduled at Cerritos for the next five years, they were worried about the expenses needed to send more kids down to Southern California.”

The proposal came in response to an amendment to the CIF constitution that allowed the San Francisco (13 high schools) and Oakland (six) sections one entrant in each event this year, bringing the total to 28 entrants. Previously, the San Francisco and Oakland sections had combined for one entry in each event.

The extra entry alters the staging of qualifying heats for the finals. In the past, finalists in running events were determined by the outcome of three heats consisting of nine entrants.

To accommodate the extra entry this year, four heats consisting of seven athletes will be run. The four heat winners plus the next five fastest individuals will qualify for the final. The Southern Section wanted nine entries in each heat for 36 per event.

FitzGerald would settle for 32 entrants with the Southern Section getting seven or eight, but he holds little hope for that alignment. Spraker, one of the founding fathers of last year’s inaugural state cross-country championships, also has made his peace with the current arrangement.

“It might be fairer to base the state meet on qualifying times,” he said. “But that might cut down on the statewide representation. It’s frustrating when you see a 10-minute two miler coming out of another section and you’ve got a 9:20 runner sitting at home, but we’ve learned to deal with it.”

Mack managed to ferret a positive aspect from a frustrating situation.

“I think it means more to a Southern Section coach than to others when his athlete qualifies for the state meet,” he said. “It would be nice if it were easier, but it wouldn’t be as sweet. When I get a kid to the state meet, I get a huge amount of satisfaction from it. It really means something.”