By Zach Cavanagh
The California Department of Public Health made slight adjustments to its guidelines for youth sports on Wednesday, April 7, allowing teams to play throughout the state, which increases the likelihood of the CIF-Southern Section holding playoff competitions for its spring or Season 2 sports.
Previous state guidance limited competition to teams within your county or immediately neighboring counties—that is, Orange County could only play teams from Los Angeles, Riverside or San Diego Counties. However, this was still a hindrance to the CIF-SS, which includes schools from Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.
CIF-SS was slated to announce its plans for the Season 2 sports postseasons on Monday, April 12. Season 2 sports are baseball, basketball, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, and boys volleyball.
The state guidelines still ban competitions between more than two teams, which provides problems for potential postseason events for track and field, swimming, tennis and golf. Those sports all conduct single-site meets or tournaments for their postseason events.
Playoffs were canceled in the Season 1 sports, including football, water polo and cross country, in a January decision to allow teams more time to complete a regular season of games, if or when they were approved to play.
Discussion about this post