Sunday, June 20, 2010

History of Division break downs. - 2009

Courtesy of www.lynbrooksports.com, Hank Lawson, Ernie Lee (Gunns HS) and Walt VanZant (Wilcox HS).


Some people have asked about how the divisions are determined so here are a couple of explanations by Ernie and Walt.


11-23-09
Folks,
Here's a chronology of how the divisions for the State meet have been determined 
(as far as I recall, my memory may be suspect on some details):

1. At the beginning, the divisions were split on a statewide level. That is, 
all sections had the same enrollment cut-offs (with all SF, O, and LA schools 
in the largest schools division). Pretty soon, however, there were large 
disparities within sections where sections like the CCS would have a large 
imbalance in terms of the number of schools in each division. This led to....

2. Allowing schools to "opt up" in division. That is, a school could move up 
into a larger schools division as long as it did so by a certain date (sometime 
in October). The thought would be that the best schools would move into Division 1. 
But what ended up happening (particularly in the CCS where the top schools were 
generally not the largest schools) was that schools would cherry-pick divisions 
to try to win CCS or qualify for the state meet. This seemed to hurt competition 
within a section, so that led to....

3. The CIF banned "opting up", but allowed each section to determine the enrollment 
cut-offs between divisions within a range. This was very good in maintaining competitive 
balance within each section. However, as the disparity of school sizes between sections 
continued to grow, the ranges started to limit the sections. In particular, Division 1 
in the SS started becoming much bigger than the other divisions. Which led us to...

4. The current set-up, where each section could pretty much align the divisions however 
they want (with the exception of "protecting" the smallest division).

Coach Ibarra commented above about the State meet being the meet that mattered most. 
Whether you agree or not, note that ALL of the changes in the past have been geared 
towards improving competitive balance at the individual section level.

-ernie lee.
Gunn Cross Country.


11-24-09
There has been extensive coverage of the CCS cross country division splits in recent 
days. So, I thought that I would provide background information that I received when 
attending the 2008 post-season cross-country sports committee meeting. Although some 
(and maybe many) might disagree with the decision of the committee that recommended 
the present division split system, the committee members had knowledgeable and 
experienced individuals who carefully considered the subject when making their decision.

In May of 2008 the CIF Federated Council decided to allow the individual sections to 
determine placement of their schools for volleyball, basketball, and cross country.

The Executive Committee of the CCS unanimously supported the CCS president’s 
recommendation to from a “Blue Ribbon” Committee to research and suggest various 
methods of splitting the divisions in the CCS for the three sports in issue. 
Assistant Commissioner Steve Filios was put in charge of this committee. Ten members 
were placed on the committee, including –

John Detar of Thomas More   Doc Scheppler of Pinewood
Jeff Lamb of Milpitas       Stu Waters of Soquel
Chris Hansen of Leland      Kevin Donohue of Serra
Bill Daskarolis of Aragon   Roger O’Sullivan of NMC
Terry Ward of Bellarmine    Rich Young of Serra

The Committee considered the following items –

1. Review of current system.
2. What are other sections doing?
3. How does our section membership compare with other CIF sections?
4. What is best for our section considering our membership?
5. What proposals might accomplish our section philosophy while
maintaining competitive equity in State competitions.

The Committee spent a considerable amount of time reviewing information in order to come 
up with a philosophy when determining how to split its divisions. The philosophy was as follows:

1. All division championships in the CCS are important and valid.
2. Altering the division placement to insure success in a state championship or to insure 
that the strongest teams/programs are grouped into a single division are not a primary 
objective.
3. Division placement should be based on fairness and equity for all member schools 
eligible for post-season play.

The original proposal was to split all five divisions equally. This proposal was presented 
to the volleyball, basketball, and cross country sports committees, the Athletic Directors, 
the League Commissioners, and the Executive Committee of the CCS for their comments.

The final decision was to split divisions 1 through 4 evenly and all schools with enrollment 
of 500 or less would be placed in division 5.

Walt VanZant
Wilcox HS
http://www.dyestatcal.com/ATHLETICS/XC/2010/stat_div.htm

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For this to work you would need state Cbeds but why not have the section championship as is. Then of those qualifying teams from the section championship place accordingly in proper divisions by strength. So the strongest teams get to go in the proper state division. So maybe you finished 3rd in D3 but you were the #15 team of the state qualifiers. That means you may race D1.

Just a thought

Anonymous said...

Good point, you could run an existing Section meet using Section CBEDs and then qualify teams for State Meet according to same results using State CBEDs.

Or have a Section meet and a State qualifier meet. SJS already has 2 post-league meets including a sub-section and a section. Could have one meet continue as a section meet and the other meet compete at State CBEDs to qualify for state. Davis Sr and Oak Ridge could battle for SJS Section at DI and then not have to compete against huge SS DI schools at State.

Popular Posts