Opinion: Vine Valley Athletic League has seen many positives in its first two years of existence, but still has room for growth going forward
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The Vine Valley Athletic League has been in existence for two years now.
There have been lots of positives, but some negatives as well.
In 2018, which was the first year of existence for the league, so much was unknown. From Napa and Vintage’s standpoint, they weren’t just moving to a new league but a new section as they came over from the Monticello Empire League and the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section. American Canyon also came from CIF SJS, but they had to come from a comparable league in the Solano County Athletic Conference.
Meanwhile, schools like Justin-Siena, Petaluma, Casa Grade, and Sonoma Valley all had been in the CIF North Coast Section for an extended amount of time, so the adjustment wasn’t as big for them. However, all these teams were in different leagues from each other except Petaluma and Sonoma Valley. That left a lot of unknowns about your opponent as league play began in the fall of 2018. Sure, the teams had played each other here or there in the non-league before the league became a thing.
With that, let’s take a deeper dive into what the league has been like so far because there are plenty of positives and negatives on this topic.
The Positives
There has been plenty of good things to come from the Vine Valley Athletic League through two years. That provides an excellent place to start when talking about the league to date.
First, it’s rekindled some local rivalries that were there, but not at the same level they are now. A few examples of this are the contests that feature Napa school. Whether it’s Big Game, Napa vs. Justin-Siena, or Vintage vs. Justin-Siena, there’s always good size crowds with very intense games. American Canyon has also made the games more meaningful with all the Napa schools. The places where I can say you can see the apparent ramp-up of intensity compared to before has been in basketball. Over the last two years, basketball especially has seen some of the best games due to the local rivalries between all three schools, as many of these games made it onto our Top 10 games of the year countdown. The 2019-20 list had a total of seven basketball games in the Top 10, with the 2018-19 list having a total of five.
As far as the Sonoma County part of the league, the Sonoma Valley-Petaluma rivalry was able to still be there. However, the Casa Grande-Petaluma rivalry has been renewed thanks to the association.
No matter how you slice it, the local rivalries in the league have been renewed like never before, which is certainly a welcomed sight to see.
The Negatives
Just like anything else that’s new, there’s always some kinks that need to be fixed.
The biggest problem with the league so far has been having a seven-school league. This has created all types of scheduling issues that had to be worked out. The biggest problem with having seven schools is working out who has the bye during league play.
The scheduled byes were a glaring problem during the 2018-19 basketball season. That season, every team had their bye before facing Justin-Siena. That problem gave every team a chance to prepare and watch Justin-Siena before facing them, which was an obvious advantage. Luckily, this problem was ultimately fixed before last season.
On top of that, the byes have had other effects on the schedule that aren’t always good. For example, Big Game has sometimes been compromised from its normal place on the schedule to make the league schedule fair across the board. While a bye will always be weird, the way league play begins and ends doesn’t seem to have a set way to do the schedule. This has made the local matchups show up in random times, with games even on weird days. One example of a game on a weird day was the second Big Game basketballs from the 2018-19 season. The girls’ game was played on a Saturday night, with the boys’ game being on the following Monday when Big Games are traditionally on a Thursday and Friday.
Over the last few years, the idea of a postseason league tournament has been floated for a few sports as well. Last year, the basketball tournament went away after being there for the inaugural season of the league in 2018-19. The league basketball tournament will be making a return in 2021 after many coaches requested that it come back. No other details have been released about it yet.
On top of basketball having a league tournament, baseball and softball were scheduled to have a league tournament last spring. The baseball tournament was supposed to take place at Arnold Field in Sonoma, with softball at home fields. There has been no word on whether or not the tournament will return next year or where it would take place.
Looking ahead to a jam-packed 2021
There will be a lot of conflicts to work out once high school sports begin after the New Year. All this comes after the CIF announced it’s revised schedule for the 2020-21 school year.
The first example of conflict comes with the student-athletes themselves. With all sports condensed down to two seasons, it’s going to be hard for athletes to play more than one sport. This is something that will no doubt affect every school around the state, but smaller schools will undoubtedly take the brunt of this. Many of these schools have multi-sport athletes, which is a big key to fielding teams.
One reason why this is a problem is that many kids play a combination of sports at all schools, but especially smaller schools. For example, 75% of the students at Justin-Siena play a sport, with a large number of them playing multiple sports.
This is going to make things a lot harder for every school, but even more so the smaller schools.
That was a lot to take in for sure. No matter how you slice it when the calendar changes to 2021 things are going to be very busy.
