CIF

I just attended my first CIF meeting.

Not that there was anything earth-shaking to write a column about.

But it was run in an extremely orderly way. Wooden paddles to vote, agenda strictly adhered to. 45 people in attendance, one hour five minutes from call to order to adjournment at the Hall of Champions in Balboa Park.

The occasion takes me back to when I first played organized sports.

As an 8-year-old in Long Beach, I played baseball in the Patrick Henry Cub League. We used a rubber-coated ball. Our neighbor Paulie Bain made fun of my brother and me because he played with a hardball in sanctioned Little League.

I first heard of CIF, probably, when I entered high school. Maybe later. You mainly hear the initials when they have to do with post-season playoffs. Our teams at Camarillo High, at least during my years before the dinosaurs, didn't see a lot of playoff action in the traditional sports.

At that time, only league champions advanced to post-season playoffs in the CIF Southern Section.

At the CIF meeting, I did know Chuck Podhorsky, principal of La Jolla High, as well as Jeff Hutzler, Athletic Director and former football coach at Country Day, and Joel Allen, Athletic Director and present football coach at Bishop's, all schools that I interact with in photographing and reporting on high school sports.

Another positive about the CIF San Diego Section is that it's right here. I was able to drive from my home to CIF headquarters. I don't know them personally, but I recognize John Labeta, Assistant Commissioner, and Jerry Schniepp, Commissioner.

In the Southern Section, CIF and its decisions came from a distant place of which I wasn't aware. I can't even tell you where the CIFSS office is now. It is a humongous section, one of many in the state--much bigger than the San Diego Section as far as number of member schools and the geographic area covered.

I associated "CIF" with boyhood stars like Keith Jamaal Wilkes, who I referenced in a previous column. He and his Ventura Cougar teammates dominated us lowly Camarillo Scorpions in basketball. Wilkes then put the screws to us as CIF Southern Section Player of the Year his senior year after transferring to Santa Barbara High and teaming with Don Ford, who also went on to play in the NBA after Division I college.

CIF was the Scorpion baseball team hosting Santa Fe Springs when I was a sophomore. The Scorpion varsity was led by first baseman Randy Elliott, who hit .300 or close thereto on home runs alone. He was drafted by the Padres in the first round of the amateur draft that year, 1969. You can look it up.

Unfortunately, my brother Steve, a slick-fielding first baseman, played behind Elliott and, as a result, never saw game action except for a handful of at-bats the whole season. Scouts were following Elliott, who I interviewed for The Stinger, the campus newspaper, and they wanted to see him crush a baseball even when the game had long been decided.

Poor me. Then I had to play behind my brother at first base the next year, and I had seven at-bats the whole year. That's when basketball started to get more appealing to me.

I never attended a CIF meeting while working as sports editor of a tiny five-day-a-week newspaper in Santa Barbara County, the Goleta Today (we would call it the Goleta Yesterday when our printing presses broke down and all the previous day's hard work didn't get published), in the mid-70's.

Students at La Jolla High and other local schools that I encounter associate "CIF" with post-season playoffs.

I have a regular occurrence while wearing my CIF-issued photo pass at games. People assume it means I'm an employee of CIF. I patiently explain that all the thing hanging around my neck is, is a media credential enabling me to be on the field or on the court to take photos.

One thing I'm learning as I chock up a CIF Coordinating Council meeting to my resume is the issue of re-leaguing. This is going to be a regular thing in the era of power rankings. As has been mentioned before, the Viking football team will be in a new league alignment next year, based on the power rankings.

Teams in other sports will experience the same: a reconfiguration among schools according to "competitive equity", rather than the old formula of enrollment. I think that's a step forward.


Copyright 2015 Ed Piper