CIF state football 2025: NorCal matchups are set. What are the top storylines?

DE LA SALLE COACH WANTS NORCAL OPEN MATCH By the time De La Salle plays Santa Margarita for the CIF Open Division state title tournament on Dec the Concord school will have gone days without playing a match The Spartans beat Pittsburg on Nov to capture their rd consecutive North Coast Section title earning a long three-week break By maintaining their status as the best group in Northern California De La Salle does not have to play a NorCal playoff encounter and instead gets an automatic bid to the Open state championship match While three weeks of rest sounds nice coach Justin Alumbaugh believes the long break is a disadvantage for his group It s a challenge It s really hard to figure out Alumbaugh announced But Alumbaugh believes there is an easy remedy to this issue What demands to happen is the NorCal Open Division necessities to come back Alumbaugh noted The two best teams in NorCal need to play each other This year if that s us and Folsom great If it s us and Riordan great If a club loses and they don t get to go that s OK Not everybody necessities a trophy We need to play football games days between games is absurd You look at the SoCal bracket and St John Bosco was the No crew in the nation and then eight days later they re out of the playoffs Like totally out I think we need to think about what playoffs mean And I think there s a way that the northern commissioners can make this a little bit better De La Salle head coach Justin Alumbaugh right congratulates Mater Dei head coach Raul Lara after their CIF open division state football championship championship at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo Calif on Saturday Dec Mater Dei defeated De La Salle - Jose Carlos Fajardo Bay Area News Group De La Salle won the state s only two Open Division regional championship games in and beating Folsom both times In the state went away from the regional championship and instead decided to send the best two teams from Northern and Southern California straight to the Open Division title games In NCS adopted the Open Division Division I bracket model for its playoffs meaning the bracket s top two and bottom two seeds play for the Open Division title The loser of the Open final drops into the Division I championship while the open champion is finished with section play For De La Salle the automatic bid to the Open Division state title championship creates an extra built-in bye week Santa Margarita which competes in the Southern Section played on Friday in the Division I title contest as its section doesn t have an Open Division and will have a two-week break before playing De La Salle Nonetheless Alumbaugh believes his group is ready for this moment The Spartans went through a gauntlet of a schedule that includes wins over Lakeland-Florida Serra Cathedral Catholic St Mary s-Stockton and Pittsburg Almost all the teams we played are continuing on Alumbaugh reported There s really good football in Northern California and we ve played the best We think that that has prepared us to do a good job Nathan Canilao LOCAL MATCHUPS Three Bay Area teams are guaranteed to reach state championship games this year The the bulk obvious one is De La Salle which earned the NorCal bye straight into the Open Division state title competition But two NorCal games will pit a pair of Bay Area teams guaranteeing that at least one will make a trip down to Southern California to play for a state championship In the Division -AA NorCal final Monte Vista - will make the trip across the Bay Bridge to face St Ignatius - matching up the Division II champions in the NCS and CCS Great plan SI coach JaJuan Lawson revealed of Monte Vista I ve known about them since I was in grade school watching Brett Nottingham They play an extremely tough schedule in the EBAL It will be a fun challenge what you want in a NorCal regional In the -A match NCS D-III champ El Cerrito - will cross the Dumbarton bridge to play CCS D-III winner Menlo-Atherton - Should be a great meeting explained M-A coach Chris Saunders They are a fast and physical company that has won a lot of games Their playmakers jump out on film and will be a tough task to contain on offense and special teams Should be a great NorCal matchup For El Cerrito coach Tim Johnson the chance to play a NorCal match validates the work his staff and players have put in to recover from a complicated season last year The Gauchos were barred from last year s postseason after the NCS ruled they had played ineligible players in multiple games We re just excited for the opportunity to compete considering how our season ended last year Johnson commented It was a tough offseason because of all the kids that transferred and the uncertainty of the undertaking But through hard work and determination we ve ascertained a way to bounce back Christian Babcock CIF ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TALKS NORCAL PLACEMENTS Where teams are placed in the NorCal matchups is perpetually a hot topic of conversation McClymonds - after certain lobbying from coach Michael Peters was slotted into the Division -A tournament against Roseville - from the Sacramento area Peters revealed last week after winning the Silver Bowl that playing in Division II or III is a disadvantage for McClymonds due to its smaller roster size at a school with about students He did note that he was hoping to be put in the low Division III or high Division IV to make it a competitive meeting CIF Associate Executive Director Brian Seymour was sympathetic to Peters concerns when he spoke to the Bay Area News Group on Sunday The Warriors were in -AA last year and should have a chance to compete this year even though they are still in D-III It s consistently tough totally because Michael does a great job of trying to schedule demanding contests for his kids early in the year Seymour announced Because once they get into league you don t have control over that He does a good job with scheduling out of league to get an idea of where he stands with his gang So each year we look at that In years past we ve had them as high as -A and it s ostensibly too high Because the roster depth discrepancy is a lot right That comes into play when you re looking at matching up teams all the way down from the highest games down to the lowest games The roster depth does have an impact on certain things Fellow Oakland association Bishop O Dowd - moved up to -AA after romping through the NCS Division VI field winning every championship by at least points They kind of ran roughshod through there so we moved them up Seymour explained We re not afraid to move teams up when we think that s where they belong Seymour also addressed why SI and Menlo-Atherton will be hosting their regional games SI traveled to Fresno to play the school now known as Central East last fall so they were in line to host M-A s situation was a little more complicated El Cerrito hosted Grant -Sacramento a couple of years ago in the regional Seymour explained Menlo-Atherton genuinely hosted a state encounter back before we did these state games in the lower levels They hosted a state match but they in fact hosted it at Sequoia High School It was a district stadium instead of theirs It came down to Menlo-Atherton had the ability to host that championship and we needed another challenge in the CCS footprint and that worked out Related Articles California high school football CIF regional state Open Division matchups Bay Area prep football Where to find our complete Week coverage Prep roundup No St Ignatius squeaks by No Clayton Valley at NorCal Tip Off Classic Menlo-Atherton continues late-season surge with a CCS championship Miramonte rallies from early deficit defeats Hayward to capture NCS D title Pittsburg will host Central East in the -A event Both schools hosted and won NorCal title games last year before falling in their respective state championship games Placing the teams on the bracket is not the hardest part of it Seymour explained The hardest part of it is trying to deal with who is hosting and who is traveling There are a lot of details that need to go into that We try to spread the games around as best we can What it came down to with them is the North Coast Section needed to have particular games and the Central Section needed to have certain games And so we were able to evenly distribute those home games between both of those two sections Absolutely Lincoln-San Jose will host in its first NorCal appearance Seymour attributed that decision to the balance between sections and stated the CIF does not intentionally prioritize rewarding first-time entrants with a home matchup Christian Babcock