The Castle Park High School football team may have been disappointed to see its perfect season and hopes for a Metro-Pacific League championship end with a 34-10 loss to neighborhood rival Montgomery in the teams’ Warrior Bowl rivalry game on Nov. 1, but bigger things could yet be in store for the Trojans.
Castle Park improved its season record to 10-1 after handing visiting Palo Verde Valley a stinging 41-13 defeat last Friday in the quarterfinal round of the San Diego Section Division V playoffs.
With the lopsided win, the second-seeded Trojans advance to Friday’s semifinals and will host sixth-seeded Mission Bay (6-6). Kickoff is 7 p.m.
The winner of Friday’s game advances to the Division V championship game Nov. 29 at Otay Ranch High School.
Mission Bay is coming off a 21-14 upset win over third-seeded Holtville last Friday.
CPHS head coach Chris Livesay said he’s had little time to celebrate the team’s quarterfinal round win with what’s at stake in the next round.
“Right after the game we started working really hard on Mission Bay and I’ve been focused on that,” the first-year Trojan coach said.
Junior running back Erik Hernandez definitely had a game worth celebrating last Friday with 206 rushing yards on 13 carries and three touchdowns.
He scored on runs of 38, 73 and 36 yards as the hosts racked up 21 points in the first quarter. They led comfortably 35-0 at halftime.
Junior Ramon Cabal rushed for 88 yards on 13 carries and scored the first two touchdowns of the game.
Overall, the Trojans amassed 313 rushing yards and scored six rushing touchdowns. Senior quarterback Demarkus Lewis scored on a one-yard keeper to round out the scoring for the hosts.
Lewis completed four of five passing attempts for 70 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions.
Castle Park remained on its game defensively with interceptions by juniors Cristian Sanchez and Robert Abarca and a fumble recovery by Abarca.
Senior Nicolas Magana was five-for-five on extra-point conversions.
On the season Hernandez has rushed for 1,291 yards and scored 19 touchdowns while Cabal has rushed for 418 yards and scored 10 touchdowns.
The Trojans have scored 56 touchdowns on the season, including 46 rushing scores.
The seventh-seeded Yellowjackets, who slid past 10th-seeded Clairemont 49-28 in the first round, ended the season 6-6.
The other Division V semifinal pits top-seeded Vincent Memorial (10-1) against fourth-seeded Francis Parker (6-5) in a game scheduled at Central Union High School in El Centro.
Manzanita League champion Vincent Memorial eliminated eighth-seeded El Cajon Valley, 23-0, in last Friday’s quarterfinals while Pacific League champion Francis Parker out-scored fifth-seeded Crawford 44-20.
Photo Gallery by Jon Bigornia
Castle Park 41, Palo Verde Valley 13
New playoff selection system doesn’t get a lot of support from coaches
We’re through the opening two rounds of the San Diego Section football playoffs and a whopping 11 upsets have occurred, including seven higher-seeded teams biting the dust in last Friday’s quarterfinals.
It seems an excessive number compared to the few upsets in each round that are annually commonplace.
Different methods have been used to seed the divisional playoffs in recent years, including a new computer model this season. No matter what method or computer algorithm that is used, section coaches never seem pleased about the outcome.
Point Loma, an annual division power, did not make this year’s playoff cut. Pointer head coach Mike Hastings was quite outspoken in the media about his displeasure with the system.
Point Loma, which plays in the brutal Western League that includes Cathedral Catholic, St. Augustine, Madison and Lincoln, finished 13th in the Division II rankings; the top 12 teams in the division advanced to post season play.
The new computer system eliminated point differential in games, placed less weight on strength of schedule and more weight on wins and losses.
The Pointers finished 3-7 and missed the cut despite recording a 31-28 loss to St. Augustine in the final week of regular season play, apparently showing the team could play alongside the top teams in the section.
The Saints received the No. 4 seed in the Open Division playoffs.
But not good enough for the Pointers, according to the new formula.
“It is hard to believe that we did not make the playoffs this season,” Hastings told The Peninsula Beacon. “Our boys played with tremendous heart all season against arguably one of the toughest schedules any team in San Diego high school football could play.
“This change was not told to us until part way into the current season. Had we known this to be the case, we would have scheduled our non-league opponents differently.”
Closer to home, Bonita Vista finished 3-7 and did not qualify for the Division III playoffs despite posting wins against two teams that made the playoffs in other divisions.
The Barons clobbered San Ysidro, 57-0, in a non-league game on Aug. 30 and sped past Patrick Henry by a score of 56-14 on Sept. 30.
San Ysidro received the No. 11 seed in the Division V playoffs while Patrick Henry received the No. 5 seed in the Division IV playoffs.
Bonita Vista proved it could compete alongside some of the better teams in the section despite playing a tough schedule that included games against St. Augustine (37-7 loss) and Steele Canyon (28-0 loss).
Steele Canyon received the No. 1 seed in the Division I playoffs.
The Barons came up short by a 28-21 score against Hilltop, which received the No. 2 seed in the Division III field, and lost a late lead against Metro-Mesa League rival Otay Ranch in a 26-23 setback. Otay Ranch received the No. 11 seed in the Division II field.
Bonita Vista received nothing.
Coaches have complained about previous systems used. No one seems totally happy with whatever computer system is used to avoid the hours of haggling through contentious seeding meetings in years past.
“I don’t know that there is a perfect system,” Castle Park coach Chris Livesay offered.
Mar Vista head coach Tyler Arciaga, who also serves as the school’s athletic director, sits on the CIF Football Advisory Committee and can provide some valuable input on the subject.
Besides removing margin of victory from the rankings algorithm, the committee also recommended penalizing teams for forfeits. Previously, forfeits did not count in the rankings; now they count as a loss.
“The intent was to prevent teams feeling the need to score unnecessary points at the end of the game when up by multiple touchdowns,” Arciaga explained. “I think the rankings that we received had some flaws in it and will definitely be looked at for next season.
“There have been some upsets this year, but that could be a statistical anomaly since our sample size is only this year.
“I think part of the reason is that the divisions are very competitive and very few divisions have heavy favorites to run the table. I attribute that to the CIF ranking system placing schools in competitive divisions.”
First and 10
As for the teams that did make the playoffs, the road to the finals has been met with some unexpected dead ends.
Among last week’s casualties was Steele Canyon, the fifth-ranked team among the 86 teams in the section. The Cougars lost, 26-19, in overtime to ninth-seeded Oceanside.
Other higher-seeded teams to end their seasons on the sidelines included second-seeded Cathedral Catholic in the Open Division semifinals (21-20 loss to third-seeded Carlsbad), second-seeded San Pasqual in the Division II quarterfinals (48-21 loss to seventh-seeded El Camino), second-seeded Hilltop in the Division III quarterfinals (34-33 loss to seventh-seeded Brawley), third-seeded Montgomery in the Division IV quarterfinals (48-29 loss to sixth-seeded La Jolla Country Day), third-seeded Holtville in the Division V quarterfinals (21-14 loss to sixth-seeded Mission Bay) and fourth-seeded San Diego in the Division III quarterfinals (30-26 loss to fifth-seeded Central Union).
First-round casualties included seventh-seeded Rancho Bernardo (34-6 loss to 10th-seeded Torrey Pines) and eighth-seeded Eastlake (10-0 loss to ninth-seeded Oceanside), both in Division I, eighth-seeded Monte Vista (47-0 loss to ninth-seeded Poway) in Division II, eighth-seeded Valhalla (21-14 loss to ninth-seeded West Hills) in Division III and seventh-seeded Mount Miguel (29-27 loss to 10th-seeded Coronado) in Division IV.
One can look at the spate of upsets in two ways: either the entire seeding was flawed or that true parity is finally at work where any team can beat any other on any given night.
For the teams that remain in the playoffs, there’s only one rallying cry: just win, baby.
