Calendar impacts PAL schedule

“We’re a week shorter than we’ve ever been,” said PAL commissioner Terry Stogner. “Next year, we get it (that lost week) back.”

The national federation sets the calendar that states have to follow, which in turn trickles down to the sections and, at the end, the various high school leagues. When the Central Coast Section says regular-season games have to be finished by a specific date on the calendar, all leagues have to adjust to make sure they can fit in their schedules.

Because the PAL is one of the larger leagues in CCS, games were scheduled for the time before Christmas. The PAL basketball schedule, for example, kicks off this Friday with quads at nearly all the PAL South schools. The PAL North, on the other hand, had a bit more leeway.

“It’s just a jarring thing,” said Westmoor head coach Herb Yaptinchay, who is also the CCS representative for the PAL North division. “If you ask the coaches, not too many are happy with starting league this early. … We still have five more preseason games.”

The goal is to avoid playing three games in one week, although because of the odd number of teams in the PAL North, the North schedule always has a number of three-game weeks. That’s why a number of PAL North teams are eschewing playing their league openers Friday and instead moving them to a different date after the New Year.

Yaptinchay also pointed out that with Christmas falling on a Tuesday, schools are in session until the end of this week, which adds on another off week the first week of January. So instead of the PAL league season beginning that first week of January, it’s been pushed back an extra week.

“The issue is, the first week of January, a lot of [schools] are not in session,” Yaptinchay said. “You basically lose a week. It just creates a lot of challenges so you’re forced to play three-game weeks.”

Another factor to consider was the regular-season ending PAL tournament that many of the coaches and fans enjoy. But to fit it into the schedule, there had to be other scheduling concessions to be made. Starting the league season in December was one of them.

“We wanted to keep the tournament, that was the big thing,” said South City girls’ head coach Paul Carion.

Avoiding three-game weeks was even more imperative for PAL boys’ soccer, where the wear and tear on players is fairly significant.

“The high school season is 20 games in 70 days. That’s really too much soccer. Soccer is supposed to have a 72-hour recovery period,” said Woodside head coach Darrell Ringman, who in the Bay Division representative to CCS and who has coached at the club and high school level for 30 years.

“We have these narrow windows to get all these games in,” Ringman continued. “Bringing those games into December, it spreads out the games over a longer period of time.”

Ringman said the time lost because of the smoke from the wildfires in California last month had a bigger impact on the sport than opening the league season in December.

“Our tryouts were grossly impacted by the smoke,” Ringman said. “I think we had two or three full training sessions before we played our first match. I think that was much more impactful.

“The schedule is the schedule. I think having the games spread out over a longer period of time is a good thing.”