Regionalization a Bad Move for CIF Playoff Bracketing

Will someone please tell members of the CIF Southern Section council to reconsider the sports regionalization plan they adopted last year?

In an effort to cut down on travel costs, the council decided geography should take precedence over level of success when playoff brackets are set in all team sports except football.

The result is that it’s not uncommon for a league champion to be put in the same region as two or three other teams from its league.

“I sure wouldn’t want to be rewarded for winning a [league] title by facing one of our league foes in the second round of the playoffs,” said Wendell Yoshida, girls’ basketball coach at Palos Verdes Peninsula. “You see those teams all year, so meeting them again in the playoffs takes the fun out of it.”

In years past, brackets primarily were based on performance, meaning the best team in a division was seeded No. 1 and the worst team seeded last. Now, each division is broken down into four regions with teams from the same area being put in the same region.

The price for a true seeded bracket was that visiting teams often had to travel several hours to a game. The Southern Section is the largest of 10 sections in the state, extending from San Luis Obispo to the San Diego County border and from Redondo Beach to Yucca Valley.

Travel expenditures and missed class time are legitimate concerns for educators. But the playoffs don’t mean as much when matchups are decided by location instead of performance.

“We realize there are problems and already have three to five pages of things we need to do to make this plan better,” said Dean Crowley, Southern Section commissioner.

Crowley, who said that travel has been reduced “by 70% to 80%,” said regionalization will be reviewed at the end of next year.

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Jason Collins, North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake’s 6-foot-10 center, will get increased playing time in the playoffs in an attempt to become the Southern Section’s all-time rebounding leader.

Collins, a senior bound for Stanford, has 1,381 rebounds, third-best in section history. The record holder is Wendell Kallenberger of Garden Grove Rancho Alamitos, who had 1,496 from 1963 through ’66.

To break the record, Collins needs to average nearly 13 a game, if the Wolverines advance to the state Division III championship game.

Harvard-Westlake begins the section’s Division III-AA playoffs Friday night, hosting Covina Northview.

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Baron Davis of Santa Monica Crossroads and Chris Burgess of Irvine Woodbridge are among eight basketball players named finalists for the Boost-Naismith player-of-the-year awarded given annually by the Atlanta Tipoff Club. The winners will be announced March 23 on CBS.

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Jenny Jennings of Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley set a Southern Section record for three-point baskets in a season last Saturday.

Her four three-pointers against Santa Ana Mater Dei gave her 123 for the season, breaking the record of 121 set by Sarah Hagman of Crescenta Valley in 1993-94.

Jennings needs 18 to tie the section record of 277 for a career set by Culver City’s Jenny Nakanishi from 1990 through ’93.

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There have been some real blowouts in girls’ soccer this season.

La Verne Bonita defeated Pomona Ganesha, 20-0, on Jan. 20. A week later, Hacienda Heights Los Altos defeated Pomona, 19-0.

Those scores don’t compare to the 29-0 victory Bakersfield registered over Arvin last Friday. The 29 goals broke the national record of 23 set by Franklin, Tenn., in 1991.

Bakersfield led, 14-0, at halftime and didn’t let up in the second half.

“They kept scoring and cheering, it was complete humiliation,” Arvin Coach Glidden Madera said.

Said Bakersfield Coach Leslie O’Connor: “How can you teach your kids all year to play consistently well and then say not to do the right thing and play hard?”

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The City Section boys’ and girls’ soccer playoff pairings were released Wednesday.

Reseda is the top-seeded team in the boys’ 32-team bracket and has home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, which begin Friday and conclude March 8.

In the girls’ Division 4-A, defending champion Chatsworth is the No. 1-seeded team. Hamilton received the top spot in 3-A.