Realignment in NorCal HS Season
Realignment in NorCal HS Season
The Northern California Boys HS season will kick off at the end of January, with some significant changes.
The big shift is that the Varsity Single School Gold and and Varsity Gold divisions have been eliminated in favor of a merged division of the strongest programs from both single-school and club.
The teams aren’t necessarily the programs that always win, although most are; rather, it’s a league of teams that have significant depth and can field A- and B-sides, and more, on a regular basis.
In fact, the Premier Varsity division actually has three levels - A, B, and JV, so each team is expected to field three teams each game day.
The Premier Varsity includes annual single-school top dog Jesuit, as well as defending club champion Danville, along with the team they barely beat for the title in 2014, Granite Bay.
The 2015 single-school runner-up in Northern California, Dixon, has now merged with Davis to create a larger program. The players will come from Solano County and Yolo County, and thus the team is now called the Solo Falcons.
“The primary reason for the merger was our collective desire to be in the new Premier Division within Rugby NorCal and we simply did not have enough players from our small town to field three boys high school teams every weekend,” said Rob Salaber, who heads up the Solo program and coached Dixon to a national single-school title in 2011. “We are hoping to build a strong regional program now.”
Also in the Premier Division is Archbishop Riordan (4-6 in league play in 2015), Lamorinda (0-5 in 2015 but annually one of the largest clubs in the region), Mother Lode (3-4), and Sierra Foothills (5-2).
The new setup will simplify the top end of NorCal, but will ask a lot of the programs, as they will need to field those three teams, and will have to commit to making the journey between the Bay Area and Sacramento at least a couple of times a season.
It will, however, be simpler for Jesuit, which fielded teams in separate competitions last year and often had to split their squad as they traveled to different venues.
The Boys DI is still stacked, with seven teams in Bay Division, including 2015 playoff teams Hayward and Peninsula Green, six teams in the Sacramento Division, including 2015 Boys Silver champion the Sacramento Eagles.
The Boys DIIis huge, with four divisions sporting 28 teams, including the JV teams from some in DI. With so many teams, the DII starts in the last week of January. DI and Premier starts in the first weekend of February.
See Varsity Premier Schedule Here
