Early push for League Realignment!

[sainttown]

Personally, moving Allen and Piner into the NCL is always tossed around but it's highly unlikely. All of those teams are required to play every single team in the conference, meaning that 9 out of 10 games are booked. Moving Piner and Allen would require a huge revamp of both the NCL North and South which would include relegating schools like Upper Lake down into the NCL 2. It's a novel idea but doesn't really work out.

NCL 1 North (Proposed)
Willits
Fort Bragg
Lower Lake
Kelseyville
Middletown
Piner

NCL 1 South (Proposed)
St. Helena
St. Vincent
Elsie Allen
Clear Lake
Cloverdale
Upper Lake

Dropping UL down to the NCL 2 sounds likely in this scenario, for just football at least, but that would mean creating a new scheduling format in which Teams from the North and South play alternately every other year or so. It seems like a lot of work to move 2 new schools in. Even just for football, it's highly unlikely to happen. I'm also sure that ADs and coaches throughout both leagues wouldn't be too keen on the idea of introducing 2 schools of which they have no history competing against or even have knowledge of. Not sure though, crazier things have happened.

[Ben Herrington]

Moving Piner and Elsie to either of those leagues would be a mistake even if its just for football. Piner and Elsie are much bigger and would be very mismatched when basketball, soccer, and baseball role around.

[scobserver]

Ben, the idea is Piner and Elsie and El Mo would NOT play NCL in other sports--only football, so it's a moot point.

sainttown, you make valid points. It is a shame to mess up the NCL--the NCL has a wonderful history. I don't blame you for jumping to the defense of the NCL from what is, in essence, a big school problem.

I did not know that all teams in each NCL division play one another--but only the "in division" games count in the standings, right? It is just sort of an agreement that the "other" division provides all the non league games?

no, plan is not ideal for NCL either--though, from a competitive view, it's about the right fit.

I like the A-B-C levels, but arrange by competitiveness--not by whatever playoff enrollment divisions are in force at the moment. How about Marin-SCL-NBL combine and then divvy up the 24 teams by competitiveness, 8 in each level--and then "relegate" the top and bottom teams each year. Only for football, of course, but football is such a different animal from the other sports, it really needs special treatment.

[gator19]

Ridiculous ideas. This is high school football. Get a hobby.

[Ben Herrington]

HS Football happens to be a hobby for a lot of folks that support HS sports including myself and Dave Cox from YSN365. Do you think were in this for the money?

[sainttown]

scobserver- it's hard for teams in both leagues (known collectively as the CMC) to schedule 6 extra games. if you look back in some school's histories you'll notice a good deal of them didn't play 10 games at all. While teams like St. Helena and St. Vincent could schedule Bay Area teams to fit in extra weeks, it's pretty hard for Fort Bragg and Willits to do the same. Eventually scheduling teams from the other league became a good way to fill in these holes and eventually the conference required each school to face each other, allowing only one free week to schedule against any opponent.

Never leaving the North Bay for an away game gets real old but it's for the benefit of teams far removed. I remember scrimmaging against Piner, Analy and Santa Rosa. That would ahve been fun to play new teams (maybe not Santa Rosa haha) but there's no use stressing about it now. It would have been nice to play other teams though and change it up.

[4thqtrcomeback]

Moving the Sonoma County small schools together in a C league won't happen for a long time if ever. The NCL schools have a good thing going. To have nine set games with schools your size that are extremely competitive is a great thing and tough to come by. Besides, year after year St. Vincents and Cloverdale are not at the top of the NCL for football although they are above average. In order, the NCL programs for Football rank something like this:
1. Middletown
2. Fort Bragg
3. Clearlake
4. St. Vincent
5. Cloverdale

With that said,it would be a bad move for Cloverdale to change into the proposed C league (with Healdsburg) until their enrollment is consistently over 750 or so which will take some time.

That brings us back to the NBL and SCL teams. Mixing in the MCAL might be a good idea, but until six years from now when 101 is done it would be a logistical nightmare. Teams would be constantly showing up late to games, etc.

BTW - Gator, following high school football is a great hobby. You must not have been to too many other places in the country. I would say that Northern California gives the least support and has the lowest percentage of fans than anywhere else is the U.S. This same kind of board in other regions would have at least twice as much traffic.

[gator19]

I didn't type that well and it came off wrong. I loved your idea for realignment earlier and I love this website. I was talking about those who commented about moving Santa Rosa schools with enrollments around 1200 into the NCL (Piner and Elsie). That was a ridiculous idea and I was telling those two to get a new hobby. Realignment can be a good thing and is great discussion. But lets not suggest Piner play Calistoga and so forth. The NBL being all Div 2 teams and the SCL being all the Div 3 and 4 teams is a great idea and is REALISTIC!!! As a person who has a vote on this matter I have given my vote to support Piner and Elsie moving to the SCL and Windsor and Casa to the NBL. Sorry for the confusion on my previous post I just like real ideas being discussed that are reasonable.

[Ben Herrington]

Just moving two teams from one league to another works. Theres no major realignement and no new creation of another league. It keeps all teams concerned in the same mainly Sonoma County large school group.
Putting El Molino, Elsie, and Piner in the same boat as Calistoga or even Tomales (a successful small school) is a big mistake. I'm still a little confused on why were grouping Piner into this group in the first place. They have had 4 coaches in 7 years, before that they were an average program that finished in the middle of the NBL pack. Only reason Piner is on the radar now is their size, not recent lack of results.

[htown707]

I agree with Ben about Piner, in recent years Piner has had a lot of issues with coaches over the past few years. People complained it seemed about every coach that came into that system. But it seems like finally Piner has a good coach, I like what he was doing with the offense, later in the season, Piner was beginning to show signs of hope. They were putting more points on the board. Including 24 points they put up in the first half against the 2009 NCS runner-up Montgomery (yes I know, Monty scored 62 points). So I see Piner's program getting better and better ever year. If they were to move Piner to NCL, and if they are able to build there program like I think they will be able to, they would Dominate the NCL.