Josh Ouellette
By Josh Ouellette
This has been a pretty exciting football season so far. Then again when isn’t high school football exciting no matter where you live? Never.
There are two great finals this weekend in the Mid-Valley and Southeast divisions. If you get some time to go see one you wont regret it, I promise.
The whereabouts of these games are a little mind-boggling though. Monrovia and Whittier Christian will play at Arcadia High School? Who made that decision? Were Citrus and Pasadena City Colleges not available?
And that’s not a knock on Arcadia’s facility, in fact Arcadia has one of the nicer football stadiums in the San Gabriel Valley. It’s just not exactly a neutral site. It’s a place M-town will be familiar with, and a place WC won’t be familiar with at all.
The Bonita verse WestCo final will be held at Walnut. Another not so neutral site, but this one should legitimately host a CIF Final every year. It’s that nice of a field. At least in this case both the Bearcats and the Bulldogs play Walnut and have played there before.
So who makes these decisions? The schools? The coaches? The CIF? Because it seems like no matter what nobody is ever completely happy where the game is held. But the problem with that is the CIF allows teams to be either the home or away team. So teams feel entitled to either host games or have a game as close to their home field as they can.
Every year the finals should be held at a college or community college to avoid conflicts and establish neutrality.
A home field advantage in the finals is ridiculous. It shouldn’t be allowed at all in any sport. It makes a game that will mean so much to everyone on the field slanted. This is the 14th game a team will play in their season. Since the end of last season teams have been preparing for just this moment. And after it all boils down to it, one team gets the advantage to host the biggest game of these young men’s lives.
Sure WC won the battle to not play the game at Monrovia. Sure Bonita won’t get to play on its home field. But the neutral locations that were chosen to hosts this years finals are questionable, to say the least.
I know when it comes down to it the best team will walk off victorious and be the champions. But hopefully when the final second ticks off the clock neither team feels like they got shafted.
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