JUST PREPS : It’s Impossible to Please Everyone

Mark Pasquarella was one of many local high school football coaches who had a restless weekend.

That’s because the Southern Section playoff pairings were announced Sunday, and those who set them knew at least half of the coaches weren’t going to be happy.

Put Pasquarella, who coaches at Chino Hills Ayala, at the top of the unhappy list. His team had a 9-1 record, including victories over such powers as Anaheim Esperanza and Etiwanda. The lone blemish was a 7-6 loss to Diamond Bar (10-0) for the Sierra League title.

Still, Ayala was not seeded in the Southern Section Division III playoffs and must play its first-round game against Dos Pueblos in Santa Barbara. In the same division, Mission Hills Chaminade, which also finished 9-1 but didn’t play as tough a schedule as Ayala, was seeded third and will play host to Alhambra in the first round.

“Our placement wasn’t consistent with what the Southern Section says it’s trying to do,” said Pasquarella, whose team reached the division championship game last year. “A one-point loss to an undefeated team dropped us from a probable high seed to no seed. It doesn’t make sense.”

Bill Clark, Southern Section associate commissioner and the man who has been in charge of setting the football brackets for 15 years, understands the frustration.

“I spoke at length with Mark about his team’s placement, and I can see his point of view,” Clark said. “But if you please the people at Ayala, then those at Chaminade would be upset. You try to be fair to everyone.”

Clark spends several days organizing 16-team brackets for 11 divisions. He relies on entry sheets turned in by each league that lists its top teams. From them, he decides who should be seeded Nos. 1-16.

Certain rules are always followed, such as keeping league champions away from each other in the first round and making sure a league’s top two entries are in different parts of the bracket.

And there are special circumstances. This season, Compton Dominguez went from 9-1 to 3-7 after having to forfeit six games because it used an ineligible player. The Dons still qualified for the Division II playoffs as the third entry from the San Gabriel Valley League.

Normally, one of the division’s four seeded teams would have drawn Dominguez, because it was a low qualifier. Instead, Clark matched the Dons with Quartz Hill, the Golden League runner-up, in the first round.

“One of the main things you have to do when setting the bracket is to protect your seeds,” Clark said. “Dominguez was one player away from being a league champion, so making a top team play them right off the bat would have been punishment.”

Three long days after beginning the brackets, Clark headed home for some sleep. He would need the rest to ready himself for the complaints from coaches that would come Monday morning.

The pairings task is equally challenging in the City Section. South Gate Coach Gary Cordray heads up a committee of nine who established brackets.

From the 49 schools that play football in the section, the top 16 are placed in the Division 4-A playoffs and the next best 16 in the 3-A. Cordray said the first task is deciding who won’t be included.

“Once we’ve established who’s out, we try to make sense of who’s in,” he said. “We look at overall record, conference record and the competitive history of the conference. I always hear some complaints about our method, but the people who make those complaints never seem to have an answer on how to do it better.”