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Journal putting spotlight on local prep sports
SPORT COVID

The 2023-24 high school sports campaign officially launched last week with a slate of football and volleyball games around the region.

And with the start of the games, the Turlock Journal is proud to introduce its weekly high school page.

Each Wednesday, in this very spot, the Journal will publish standings, schedules, a high school roundup, and an Athlete of the Week, and offer up an opinion piece or feature story in this spot across the top of the page. 

This year marks my 38th season covering high school sports. You don’t have to tell me that newspapers everywhere, of every size, are facing hard times. But while most papers are continually taking away content, the Journal wants to add something for its fans of local sports. 

Hopefully, we’ll become your go-to source for high school athletics in the region. 

 

Back to basics for football playoffs

The Sac-Joaquin section held its annual Media Day last week and outlined the new postseason guidelines for football.

Quite simply, it’s quite simplified.

In years past, league champions earned the first playoff berths. If you were the champion of a Division 4 league, you could not dip below D-4 for playoffs. You could, however, possibly be moved up depending on your enrollment and how the other brackets played out. 

If you were a runner-up in that same D-4 conference — again, depending on enrollment — you might find yourself in the D-5 or D-6 bracket.

This was all done in the name of competitive equity, but frankly, it led to a lot of confusion.

The solution is this: All section football teams are placed in a division prior to the season — and this is the only division in which teams can qualify for the playoffs. That’s it. Turlock and Pitman are on the D-1 list. They can only qualify for the D-1 playoffs; Hilmar can only be in the D-5 playoffs; Hughson can only be in the D-6 playoffs; Denair can only be in the D-7A playoffs.

“I think what it has mainly done is eliminated a lot of confusion,” said assistant commissioner Will DeBoard. “You tell everybody, ‘Wait until Week 11 when the brackets come out,’ but you know coaches. They want to know now.”

It should be pointed out, however, that section champions who qualify for a NorCal regional bowl game could, at that point, find themselves in a different division. In other words, the D-4 section champ might land in the D-2 NorCal championship.

But for the sake of the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs, it couldn’t be simpler: all you have to do is win.

 

Girls flag football now official

The section also announced at its Media Day that, for the first time, girls flag football will be officially sanctioned by the SJS, with some 70 schools offering the sport, including all the schools in the Merced Unified High School District — Merced, Golden Valley, El Capitan, Atwater, Buhach Colony and Livingston. Ceres and Central Valley also will offer the sport.

“It’s exciting,” said DeBoard. “Tackle football is a co-ed sport; girls can play tackle football. But it comes off as something of a novelty. The fact that girls will have their own football is going to be really cool. And you see it here: 70 schools are going to be playing the sport. … That’s a really impressive number.”

There will be minimum of 30 schools competing in two playoff divisions for championship banners.