Prep Rally: Yet another week before highschool football playoff divisions are announced

Hi, and welcome to a different edition of Prep Rally. My name is Eric Sondheimer. Time flies by fast. That is the ultimate week of the regular season in highschool football. Southern Section playoff pairings shall be announced Sunday based on CalPreps power rankings. City Section pairings will come out Saturday using CalPreps as a guide.

Playoff primer

As of today within the Southern Section, teams should not assigned to divisions, they usually won’t be until Oct. 29, the day after the top of the regular season. There shall be 14 divisions. Calpreps.com rankings will determine each the divisional breakdown and seeding inside each of those divisions,

Automatic berths shall be earned as up to now, with two berths from leagues of 4 or five teams, three from leagues of six to eight teams, and 4 from the nine-team Channel League. There are projected to be 176 automatic berths in total. In years prior to 2021, some third-place teams that may otherwise have earned automatic playoff berths were “bumped” if there have been greater than 16 automatic qualifiers in a division. That doesn’t occur under the brand new system since the division lines are flexible.

The Division 1 field is anticipated to incorporate eight teams. These shall be the highest eight teams within the Calpreps.com power rankings after the ultimate week of the regular season. The highest three seeds haven’t modified all season: 1. Mater Dei, No. 2 St. John Bosco, No. 3 Corona Centennial. Teams shall be matched up by rating no matter league finish or affiliation. This division can have greater than eight teams if the team ending ninth within the rankings is just not an automatic qualifier.

In Divisions 2 through 14, the precise breakdown will rely on the ultimate rankings. It appears likely that each one eight Division 1 teams may have automatic berths, which would go away 168 remaining teams with automatic berths. The remaining automatic qualifiers shall be distributed evenly across the opposite 13 divisions,

If there are eight teams in Division 1, Division 2 would start with the following automatic qualifier below that, nominally the No. 9 team within the Calpreps rankings in the event that they have earned an automatic berth. They’d then go down the rankings from that time noting automatic qualifiers. The primary 13 automatic qualifiers could be in Division 2, and a line could be drawn immediately above the following automatic qualifier after that.

With 13 automatic berths within the division, the three highest-rated teams within the division which have not earned automatic berths shall be at-large teams in that division. If there should not not less than three at-large teams within the division and thus there are fewer than 16 teams, the road that was drawn within the previous step could be moved right down to include enough teams to place 16 in Division 2.

The 16 teams in Division 2 shall be seeded 1-16 in line with the Calpreps rankings. First-round bracketing is standard with the upper seed hosting. Home teams in subsequent rounds shall be determined by the standard method (whoever has had fewer home playoff games gets to host; there may be a coin flip if each have hosted the identical variety of games).

Keep in mind that line they drew to designate the “end” of Division 2? That’s the “start” of Division 3. The primary team below the road, which is able to by definition be an automatic qualifier, shall be the No. 1 seed, they usually’ll count down the following 13 automatic qualifiers inclusive of that team, and draw a line above the following automatic qualifier below that. Those 13 automatic qualifiers together with the three best at-large teams within the division will constitute the Division 3 field. The road shall be moved down if essential to make sure there are not less than 16 teams within the division.

With the projected 176 automatic qualifiers and Division 1 projecting to incorporate eight of those, it seems that this 12 months Divisions 2-13 will each include 13 automatic qualifiers, and Division 14 will include the remaining 12 automatic qualifiers. Again, this may occasionally differ barely if, for instance, Division 2 or 3 include greater than 13 automatic qualifiers, so this must be considered a suggestion reasonably than a certainty.

The City Section uses CalPreps rankings as a guide but can move around teams based on other aspects, corresponding to face to face matchups and league finish. The one certainty is that unbeaten San Pedro shall be No. 1 for the eight-team Open Division if it gets past rival Banning in its final league game on Friday.

The Garfield-Roosevelt game lived as much as the hype, the sport and halftime show. Garfield prevailed 16-8 before a crowd of greater than 30,000. Here’s the report on the sport and activities. Here’s commentary on what made the event among the finest lately.

Within the high desert, it was a battle of two top teams and unbeaten Oak Hills improved to 9-0 with a 41-27 victory over Apple Valley. Here’s the report.

There are 15 unbeaten teams left with one week to go within the regular season. Here’s a report.

Corona del Mar knocked off Newport Harbor within the annual Battle of the Bay. Here’s a report.

There are two huge games on Thursday night this week, with 9-0 Cypress playing at 9-0 Crean Lutheran and the Marmonte League title decider matching Oaks Christian against St. Bonaventure at Ventura College.

On Friday within the City Section, the Marine League title shall be decided when San Pedro plays at Banning. Within the Western League, Venice is playing at Palisades for the league title.

Here’s this week’s top 25 rankings by The Times.

Here’s the entire week 10 schedule.

Female officials

It’s going to be quite an evening for the all-female officiating crew on Friday for the Maywood vs. Marquez football game in honor of breast cancer awareness month.

The Los Angeles officials’ unit has assigned Crystal Nichols to be the referee, joined by LaQuica Hawkins, Zina Jones, Kim Bly and Connie Wells.

Call it woman power.

Alex Singleton returns

Through the summer, Denver Broncos linebacker Alex Singleton was helping coach at his alma mater, Thousand Oaks High.

So it was no surprise that players from the Lancers decided to return out en force to support Singleton last Monday night when he got here to town to face the Chargers at SoFi Stadium. Your complete Lancers team, coaching staff and a number of other parents attended the sport.

All Singleton did was record an astounding 19 solo tackles in a loss to the Chargers. That ties for the second-most solo tackles in a single NFL game in history. Singleton had 21 combined tackles. The one player to have registered more solo tackles was Recent York Jets linebacker David Harris, who made 20 tackles against Washington in 2007.

Here’s the report.

A free clinic for injuries

They arrive from Inglewood High. They arrive from Gardena Serra. They arrive from Redondo Union. They arrive from north, west and south — the Friday night brigade limping through the archway the following morning.

There’s a line of children outside the West Coast Sports Medicine Foundation office in Manhattan Beach on Saturday mornings half an hour before the door’s open. The athletes squeeze like sardines into the waiting room as finely controlled chaos erupts within the hallway through the office door.

Here’s a report.

Neighborhood ballers

In a pristine gym off Vanowen Street in Canoga Park, there’s a gaggle of Armenian highschool basketball players practicing at 6:30 p.m. each night. Their story is so unique that their quest to win a championship this season is likely to be worthy of a documentary.

Avand Dorian, Matthew Sahnazoglu and twins Ryan and Michael Martirossian have been attending Armenian General Benevolent Union since they were 3.

“It’s like a family and so welcoming,” Dorian said. “It seems like you get to play basketball together with your brothers day-after-day. You’re comfortable to present and take criticism to anybody.”

Add 6-foot-6 Arpiar Harmandian, who arrived as a freshman, and you have got five seniors who can practically read one another’s minds. Last 12 months they were 21-0 throughout the regular reason. This season, AGBU’s goal is to win a Southern Section Division 2A championship.

Here’s a profile on a neighborhood team to root for this season.

Cross country

San Clemente is making a push for best boys’ cross-country team within the Southern Section.

Of their latest performance on Saturday, the Tritons won the Division 1 sweepstakes race on the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational.

Parker Simmons of Crescenta Valley won the invitational race in 14:46.

In the women’ sweepstakes, Rancho Cucamonga won the team title. Kelli Gaffney of Great Oak took the person title in 17:33. Freshman Avery Peck of Long Beach Poly was second in 17:38.

Here’s the link to finish results.

Girls’ volleyball

He’d wander out from his post behind Chaparral High’s snack bar, and Maria Rittenberg would see her son sitting down not in the house stands but within the visiting bleachers, striking up a conversation with anyone he could find.

“That’s my sister over there, number 16,” Sebastian Rittenberg would say, declaring Chaparral standout Bella Rittenberg, who has committed to the University of Pennsylvania. “You gotta cheer for her!”

Why would they cheer for Bella Rittenberg? They were visiting fans. But there was no stopping Sebastian, Bella’s 22-year-old brother with autism who loves his sister greater than anything and has never been afraid to indicate it.

When their grandmother died after they were younger, there was Bella, sitting with Sebastian and watching their favorite movie, “Sleeping Beauty.” When he fell, cutting his knee open, there was Bella, bringing him to Maria, their mother. When he was assaulted in a first-grade bathroom, Maria telling the story of a boy who punched and kicked and ripped Sebastian’s shirt off, there was a young Bella, asking, “But why?”

“My yin, my yang,” Sebastian said of Bella. “My guardian angel.”

As she’s shaped them, the Chaparral senior and girls’ volleyball outside hitter has been shaped by her family.

Here’s a profile.

Here’s an update on the Southern Section playoff pairings and results.

Notes . . .

Swimmer Rex Mauer of Loyola has committed to Stanford. . . .

Dennis Evans, a 7-foot-1 senior at Hillcrest, has committed to Minnesota. . . .

Junior pitcher Wylan Moss from Santa Ana Mater Dei has committed to UCLA. . . .

Chelsea Stocks has resigned as girls’ basketball coach at Brea Olinda to turn into an assistant at Cal State Fullerton. . . .

Etiwanda’s girls’ basketball team, expected to challenge Sierra Canyon for No. 1 in Southern California, has added junior Ryann Riddle from La Salle, which won the 3AA title last season. . . .

Pitcher Kassandra Gewecke from Temple City has committed to Ohio State for softball. . . .

Softball player Rachel Little from Burbank Burroughs has committed to Utica University. . . .

From the archives: Gerrit Cole

Gerrit Cole is headed to Hall of Fame status with the Recent York Yankees, and his rise began as a dominant pitcher at Orange Lutheran, then UCLA before being the No. 1 pick of the 2011 draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Here’s a story from 2008 about Cole’s rising velocity at Orange Lutheran and his draft options while still in highschool. He ended up passing on a right away pro profession to learn from John Savage at UCLA. The opposite freshman pitcher who arrived similtaneously Cole was Trevor Bauer.

Here’s a story from 2019 about Cole’s pitching days at Orange Lutheran.

Recommendations

From the Washington Post, a story on billions being spent on youth sports, with a few of it disappearing.

From SI.com, a story on a highschool diver who experienced a college shooting and now must work out the best way to go forward.

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on former Oaks Christian running back Zach Charbonnet of UCLA.

From Columbiatribune.com, a story on former Chaminade punter Jack Stonehouse.

From the Recent York Times, a story on trial in Hawaii that would change highschool sports.

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