Girls’ Soccer Revamps Its Draw

The City Section girls’ soccer playoffs will begin with a 32-team draw for the first time. It’s the same format used for the boys’ playoffs the last few years.

However, unlike the boys’ single-elimination competition, the girls’ draw will be split into separate divisions after one round of play. The 16 first-round winners will make up the City draw and the losing teams will drop into the Invitational playoff. Previously there were two 16-team, single-elimination playoffs.

“You always have a few teams that get put in the Invitational bracket that think they can play with the big boys,” Canoga Park Athletic Director Jo Ann Heller said. “This way, we say, ‘Go ahead and prove it.’ ”

Heller proposed the change to the City’s Interscholastic Athletics Committee, a panel of 29 section coaches, principals, athletic directors and students, last spring.

Presented as a possibility for all sports, the format is being instituted on a voluntary basis, and only girls’ soccer is trying it. Plans are set for the system also to be used for the softball playoffs in 2004.

The new format adds one more round of competition to the schedule, though the number of teams competing from among the section’s nine leagues remains the same.

City girls’ soccer seedings will be determined today and the boys’ seedings on Tuesday.

Playoffs begin Thursday, and the championship games will be March 8 at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.

-- Lauren Peterson

Phillip Reid of Oxnard Rio Mesa isn’t apt to be particularly well rested when he runs today in a special boys’ mile race in the Tyson Invitational indoor track and field meet at the University of Arkansas.

That’s because Reid planned to attend his father’s wedding Friday night before departing on a flight from Los Angeles International Airport at 1:40 this morning.

He was scheduled to arrive in Fayetteville, Ark., at 10 a.m. CST and will run the mile only eight hours later.

“You want him to run well, but it’s not like he’s going down there with the goal of running 4:10,” Rio Mesa assistant Jeff Wrout said. “Hopefully, he can just run a good, solid race and be happy about it.”

-- John Ortega