Point Loma’s football season ended on a sour note last Friday night when they were scheduled to meet Western League foe St. Augustine in a CIF Div. I quarterfinal game, the second time the two teams played in just a 14-day span. The results weren’t much different.
The No. 2 seeded Saints built a 45-0 lead over the No. 7 seeded Pointers before Josh Ball scored the final touchdown of the Pointers’ season in a 45-7 victory at Mesa College that followed a 45-15 Saints win at Point Loma in the season’s final league game.
The Saints move on to face No. 3 seeded La Costa Canyon tomorrow (Nov. 25) in the semifinals.
The loss left the Pointers with an uncharacteristic overall record of 5-7 including a 1-3 mark in a newly configured Western League. More on that later. But first:
Why were the two teams scheduled to play each other again and so soon?
The answer lies with the San Diego Section of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which oversees all prep athletics in the San Diego-Imperial County region along with other offices that cover the remainder of California.
Formerly, schools were grouped for playoff competition solely by student population.
In their relatively new “Power Rankings,” the CIF has attempted to fairly balance competition between schools with vastly different student populations and skill levels in an effort to promote play between similar schools.
This new system awards points both for the strength of a school (based on its record) and the strength of the opponents it has played. Playoff pairings are made directly from these numbers.
Schools are grouped in divisions numbered one (I) to five (V) based on records over the previous five years. The Pointers, based on their high-quality program, have earned placement in Div. I, which composes the county’s top 24 teams.
At season’s end, the top eight teams in Div. I become the elite eight-team “Open Division,” which includes an automatic bye in the first round.
The remaining 16 teams comprise the Div. I playoffs, with the top four teams receiving a first-round bye.
Seeded No. 7 in Div. I, the Pointers outscored No. 10 El Camino in a dramatic first-round game played at Clairemont, with the winning team scheduled to move to the quarterfinals against No. 2 Saints, resulting in the teams’ second meeting.
In Divs. II, III and IV there are 12 playoff schools each. Div. V and VI includes four schools each. New league members Even more unfortunate this year was a re-leaguing of public schools in the San Diego Unified School District that saw the Pointers’ Western League drop teams like Mission Bay and La Jolla in favor of county powers Cathedral Catholic and St. Augustine, private schools who are able to recruit players, even providing scholarships to athletes unable to afford tuition.
The traditionally strong Dons and Saints as well as holdover Madison were all ranked among the Top 10 teams in the county. Newcomer Mira Mesa joined longtime member Point Loma to form the new league. The results were both predictable and lopsided:
Top-rated Cathedral remains undefeated and won its Western League games by an average score of 37-7.5. The Pointers came closer than anyone, losing 37-17 on Oct. 21.
Second place Madison lost only to Cathedral and won its league games by a 52.3-18.7 score skewed by a wild 56-42 win over the Saints.
The third place Saints, who lost only to Cathedral and Madison, won their league games by an average score of 44-9.6.
The fourth place Pointers defeated only Mira Mesa, losing four league games by an average score of 45-10.5.
Lowly Mira Mesa finished their season 1-9, losing their four league games by an average of 45-8.5.
If the goal of this re-leaguing effort was to balance schools within each league, the Western League is a bad example.
Other CIF sections have been able to place their larger number of private schools together into one or more leagues where they battle similar schools for section championships.
Until the local CIF is able to do this, there will be little balance in leagues like the current Western League that have three Top 10 teams among its five members.