La Jolla Country Day players gather for a photo after they clinched another league championship. The Torreys won 2020 CIF SoCal Open Division region title. Photo: @RobGrasso2 / Twitter.com.
The playoffs in the CIF Southern Section, Central Section, San Diego Section and Central Coast Section will all conclude this weekend with teams that qualify moving on to the Southern Regional playoffs while the CCS teams join the other sections in the CIF Northern Region whose seasons have concluded. As for movement this week, the surprise team of the CIFSS D1 playoffs, Esperanza of Anaheim, goes from the bubble to No. 18.
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The Big Picture: With some top players either asked by their future colleges to begin summer school like any other year, or some others opting on their own to prepare for summer school and the next level, the luster is a bit off of the upcoming CIF Southern Regional Open Division playoffs that begin next week.
It’s really no different than any other year. Most all major D1 college programs require incoming freshmen student-athletes to begin summer school and in-depth conditioning as soon as they graduate.
The difference is that in a normal year the season would be over in March, whereas this year the season didn’t even start until after an ordinary season would have ended.
The end result is not only did the AAU season pull away underclass players competing with their club team at the same time as their high school team, with the permission of the CIF, but at this point most seniors have already graduated and for some of the top players that means the colleges want them now, or they need to leave on their own to prepare for college, whether or not their high school season has concluded.
Because of this, we have decided to venture down south for the CIF Southern Section Open Division title game on Thursday to see the top two teams in the rankings square off for the championship.
