LOS ALAMITOS – Pairings for the 2023 CIF Southern Section-Ford Championship Football Playoffs were announced at the CIF-SS headquarters Sunday, Oct. 29, matching 216 teams in 14 divisional brackets. This is the third year of competitive equity based individual school placement formulated by ratings from the CalPreps website. Combine that with automatic qualifiers from league play and at-large teams that applied to get in based on their record and computer ranking, just as with any other season, some teams will be happy, some will not.
Weekly preliminary-round games leading to the divisional championship contests November 24-25 will get underway with first-round contests on Friday, Nov. 3, however, contests may start at another time if mutually agreed upon by both competing schools and approved by the CIF-SS office.
The Southern Section only went with eight teams in the highest division this year (Division One) with Centennial, out of the Big West Conference – Upper Division, being one of them. The CIF Southern Section Division One championship football game will be held at the historic Los Angeles Coliseum, marking the first time in 26 years that the Coliseum has played host to a CIF‐SS championship event.
The game will be played Friday, Nov. 24with kickoff at 7:00 p.m. The game will be televised live on Bally Sports SoCal. The playing of this championship will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the LA Coliseum and marks the second year in a row the CIF‐SS Division 1 game will be contested at a stadium celebrating its history. Last year, the Rose Bowl Stadium hosted the game in its centennial year. Championship games in Division 2-14 will be played at host team sites.
As for our more local teams, none received the No. 1-seed in their brackets, but Vista Murrieta did receive an at-large bid based on their strength of schedule. And while the brackets contain nearly 20 local teams, two very head scratching first-round games for our area come in Division Five and Division Ten. In Division Five, Liberty (9-1) and San Jacinto (6-4), both top teams from the Mountain Pass League, will meet for the second time in four weeks. Liberty beat San Jacinto 40-37 in Week Eight, which helped the Bison secure the school’s first-ever league title. In Division 10, another rematch between Hemet (7-3) and Rancho Christian (7-3) will take place. Hemet won the Inland Valley League title this year after opening their league run with a 23-16 victory over the Eagles.
The Southern Section also released the two brackets for the 8-man football playoffs with Cornerstone Christian and Cal Lutheran being included in the Division Two playoffs. The local teams mentioned below will be moving on to the post season where they will begin their quest to a CIF-SS title starting this week.
Here is the schedule for the area teams that qualified for the playoffs.
CIF SOUTHERN SECTION 11-MAN FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS
(Games scheduled for 7 p.m. Dates, sites and time are subject to change).
DIVISION 1
No local teams
DIVISION 2
Damien at Murrieta Valley
Chaparral at Oaks Christian
Vista Murrieta vs. Long Beach Poly at Veterans Stadium
DIVISION 3
No local teams
DIVISION 4
Great Oak at La Serna
DIVISION 5
San Jacinto at Liberty
Eisenhower at Orange Vista
DIVISION 6
Simi Valley at Rancho Verde
Laguna Hills at Murrieta Mesa
DIVISION 7
No local teams
DIVISION 8
Tahquitz at St. Anthony
DIVISION 9
No local teams
DIVISION 10
Rancho Christian at Hemet
Brea Olinda at Elsinore
Paloma Valley at West Covina
DIVISION 11
Hillcrest at Linfield Christian
DIVISION 12
No local teams
DIVISION 13
No local teams
DIVISION 14
Temecula Prep at Artesia
Rancho Alamitos at Santa Rosa Academy
CIF SOUTHERN SECTION 8-PERSON FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS
(Games scheduled for 7 p.m. Dates, sites and time are subject to change).
DIVISION 2
Cornerstone Christian at Lancaster Baptist
California Lutheran vs. Calvary Chapel
*All stats, schedules, photos, and scores are supplied by local high school athletic directors, MaxPreps, CIF-SS offices, contributing writers/photographers and countless fans of the games via social media. Is your team’s score missing? Want to leave a game note? Let us know if your school is inside our coverage area and would like to be mentioned.
JP Raineri can be reached by email at sports@reedermedia.com.
