CIF Commissioner Rob Wigod attended a number of CIF finals in June, including the baseball championships at Cal State Fullerton. (Photo: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone)
Week one of the high school sports season is in the books and CIF Southern Section Commissioner Rob Wigod could breathe a sigh of relief after a challenging 2020-21 season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
While there were some football games that had to be cancelled in the section, games went on as scheduled for the most part. The last football season was delayed until March and other sports seasons were delayed and had to be rescheduled.
“We were very pleased to see so many games played and see our sports get started on schedule as we originally had planned,” Wigod said in an interview with OC Sports Zone Wednesday. “Girls volleyball was first on Aug. 14 and then zero week football last weekend. Monday of this week, boys water polo, girls tennis, girls golf got started. We’re ready for boys and girls cross country to start next week and eight-man football also starting this weekend.
“Right now, we are on track and on schedule as planned and looking forward to continuing on that path.”
While the California Department of Public Health issued guidelines last spring for the return of sports, Wigod said there have been no updates as yet for the fall.
“We have not received anything from the California Department of Public Health and do not know if there is something coming from them in the time ahead so we continue to proceed on schedule until otherwise instructed,” Wigod said.
Wigod said he is aware that some football games had to be cancelled in the section, but added many games were played during zero week. Decisions on cancellations are up to individual schools and games that are called off go as no-contests, which means teams can reschedule games.
“I don’t know the number exactly,” he said. “As you know, that’s a constantly changing situation for some schools. We’ve certainly seen some of those cancellations have resulted in schools picking up opponents and actually being able to still play a game that week. But I was thinking about it over last weekend and read and saw a lot of scores from last weekend and just noticed today looking in the newspaper the list of games getting ready to be played this weekend and it was a pretty long list.
“So we do know and expect we would have certain postponements or cancellations. I don’t know that it’s a tremendous number but I don’t have a specific number or a percentage, just knowing that we do have a lot of games that are being played.”
Wigod said he’s pleased that more athletes are now given the opportunity to compete in a more normal sports schedule.
“To have that opportunity to start this school year in the fashion that we are used to is a completely different situation than we had last year where we were really in a holding pattern and a waiting pattern for so long before we were finally able to get started,” he said.
Wigod said he was not surprised to learn that Los Angeles County will begin testing athletes once a week starting next week. So far, Orange County has not instituted mandatory testing although it’s been reported that some schools are testing athletes.
“I think we wanted to believe there was so much learned last spring we were able to conduct programs with certain guidelines and protocols in place to make sure everything was healthy and safe for the student athletes, so things like testing, masking, capacity limits, whatever those kind of measures that would be instituted I believe we have great experience at it and our schools did a wonderful job last year in implementing the protocols when they were necessary,” Wigod said.
“So I’m not surprised necessarily, not knowing what’s going to happen from here, whether other counties will begin to develop their own guidelines as well. But I would like to think we’re in a much better position than we were because of the experiences that we had the last school year and our schools are able to manage these protocols in an effective way.
“What we are hoping for is that we aren’t completely shut down or counties don’t look to completely shut down their education on campus and the ability for athletic programs to function as well. We waited so long for an opportunity last school year and it finally came. And when it came, I think we did exactly what we said we would do.”
While not as many restrictions are in place, the coronavirus continues to be a concern. Wigod said he continues to monitor the numbers for the virus and their potential effect on sports.
“There are many factors involved,” Wigod said. “A year ago, we were talking about vaccinations and the ability for people to get protection from the virus and watching how it was developing and spreading. Now, we have obviously a different situation with the way it has continued to spread and move all over the place with vaccinations in order. Each day, I just keep hoping we see those numbers go back in the other direction. We had a marked decrease in all that kind of information back as the school year was ending in May and June and very encouraging numbers which allowed us to finish the school year in such a better way than we started it last year.
“I want to be hopeful we can see those trends and those numbers start going back in the other direction.”
While the coronavirus may still be a concern, it didn’t appear to affect attendance. Crowds were large at a number of football games during zero week.
“I think people missed high school athletics, people missed who we are and what we do,” Wigod said. “We hoped that when we returned to play we would have a heightened appreciation for what high school athletics is and I think it started to show itself really last school year. We had some great crowds and great interest in coming to watch our student athletes perform when we were able to do it and starting off this year again with some optimism and hope that we can continue on moving forward.”
Wigod said he expects sports to stay on schedule with “three seasons of sport, full regular seasons, section championship opportunities, CIF regional and state championship opportunities and much more of what people are used to terms of the conduct of education based athletics.”
One change will be a new CIF football playoff system which Wigod is excited about. The new system will use current season rankings to put teams into playoff divisions as opposed to using criteria from the previous season.
“We’re a year behind where we expected it to be,” Wigod said. “It’s going to be a culture change, but the important thing I hope people remember is that this is the most accurate way that we can evaluate our teams. There can be nothing more accurate than using this current regular season and only this current regular season to formulate divisions to place schools in the appropriate place and then let them compete for the opportunity to win championships, because that’s what it’s always about, it’s the competition and are you playing at the level you should be playing at against teams that are at the same level basically as you are.
“We will be very excited to see this roll out this year and again, reminding people why it was voted in so overwhelmingly by our schools, why our coaches want this to happen is because it’s the most accurate way of evaluating the performance of teams using only this current regular season.”
The first rankings will be released next week, Wigod said.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
More Stories
All-CIF softball teams include Orange County players and coaches
PHOTOS: Irvine stays alive for CIF playoffs with PCL victory over Laguna Hills
PHOTOS: Resilient Irvine team holds on to defeat Woodbridge for fourth win in a row