NCS proposal would push most successful teams up in class

The best local football competition last fall might have been in the NCL I, where Fort Bragg and St. Helena raced neck and neck for the crown. In the end, the Timberwolves finished 10-0 overall, handing the 9-1 Saints their only loss of the regular season.

These were two exceptional small-town teams. But when the playoffs started, they were cast into a North Coast Division 4 bracket populated by private-school powerhouses like Cardinal Newman, Marin Catholic and Moreau Catholic. Fort Bragg eked out the No. 8 seed, St. Helena the No. 9, and they were forced to go head to head in the first round. The Timberwolves prevailed 28-21, then were crushed 49-0 in the second round by top seed Marin Catholic, which ultimately defeated Cardinal Newman in the D4 championship game.

To many small-school coaches and administrators, this was the perfect illustration of a high school sports structure that had lost its balance. Now the NCS may be prepared to level the playing field.

The section’s Board of Managers, as part of its regular spring meeting today at Mira Vista Golf & Country Club in El Cerrito, will consider a motion to establish more equitable divisions in football, basketball, baseball, softball, girls’ volleyball, water polo and lacrosse. If approved, the proposal would bounce schools up or down based upon recent postseason performances.

“It certainly helps us,” Fort Bragg football coach Roy Perkins said. “It puts us where we should be. I have a good group coming back - not like last year’s team, bur pretty good. Looking at it, at least we know we can be competitive in the playoffs.”

In the past, the NCS has filled its divisions purely via enrollment. Some have argued this creates an unfair disadvantage for small-town public schools, which don’t possess the same ability as similarly sized private schools to draw top athletes from a wide geographic area.

According to NCS commissioner Gil Lemmon, just about every other section in California applies some degree of redistribution.

“We’re probably the last major section that hasn’t enacted some form of competitive equity,” Lemmon said.

Under the current proposal, the NCS would look at teams’ performance in the most recent three-year period of competition, and would apply a formula that assigns 15 points for winning a section title, 10 points for reaching the section championship game, six points for making the semifinal round, three points for playing in the quarterfinals and one for making the playoffs.

Any team averaging 8.0 points or more per season would be bumped up one division. To balance the field, one school would move down a division for every school that moves up. That school would be identified as the one with the lowest point total under the system outlined above; if more than one team tied for lowest point total, the campus with the smallest enrollment would be the one to settle into a lower division.

As part of its agenda packet, the NCS included examples of how the system would work for football and basketball.

In football, six teams would climb divisions in 2016, and six others would drop. The only Redwood Empire schools affected would be Santa Rosa, slated to move from Division 1 to Division 2, and Elsie Allen, which would fall from D4 to D5.

Notably absent from the rejiggering is Cardinal Newman. The Cardinals lost in the Division 4 championship game last year but made it only to D3 quarterfinals in 2013 and 2014, giving the program an average score of 5.33 points in the proposed formula.

And yet Fort Bragg and St. Helena can count on being free of Newman for a while. That’s because the NCS is simultaneously adjusting enrollment figures for divisions. The minimum enrollment for Division 4 is 551, meaning both of the top NCL I football teams are moving to D5.

“I had to hope that sanity was going to prevail,” Perkins said. “What we’ve been saying for years is just too logical. My complaint was based upon the fact that they have a rule that states divisions are supposed to be balanced, and they had not been doing that. And of course, the competitive inequity had gotten ridiculous. We needed a method to address that”

Marin Catholic football, meanwhile, would get bumped up to Division 3 under the proposed rules. Presumably, that would create greater opportunity for Cardinal Newman in D4, making it more likely that the Cardinals would ascend to the higher division in the future.

The shakeup would be more pronounced in basketball, with 13 NCS schools moving up and 15 moving down. The latter would include the boys’ programs from Santa Rosa High (D1 to D2), Rancho Cotate (D2 to D3), El Molino and Fort Bragg (both D4 to D5).

Teams’ slotting for NCS would also apply to CIF state playoffs if they were to advance that far. If a team were unable to sustain its success after moving up, it would be returned to its original division. Also, schools would still be permitted to petition to move up.

The NCS Board of Managers comprises 56 members, including two representatives of each league in the section, plus various district superintendents, school board representatives and NCS officers. The motion requires a simple majority vote for approval, and the change, if ratified, would go into effect this fall.

The proposal has already been recommended by the section’s Sports Advisory Committee (by a 29-1 vote), Alignment Committee (7-0) and Executive Committee (6-3). That doesn’t mean today’s vote will be a rubber stamp.

“The last time we considered this proposal,” Lemmon said. “The SAC overwhelmingly approved it, as it has this year, and the Executive Committee approved it, as it has this year. But the Board of Managers tabled it. You really don’t know which way it’s gonna go.”

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.