The Southern Section office released its Track & Field Divisional breakdown for the upcoming 2022 season.
The biggest headline of the reassembled divisions is that the longtime host for the Division 2 Prelims, Moorpark, has moved over to Division 3. With that, Ventura High School will now play host to the Division 2 Prelims in 2022 for the first time.
But Moorpark head coach Rob Dearborn will remain more active than ever in taking on the duty of hosting the 2022 CIF-SS Finals and Southern Section Masters Meet. While successfully navigating the paperwork and working directly with health officials in Ventura County, Dearborn played host to two of the larger invites in Southern California in 2021 while also conducting the Division 2 Prelims and Finals last spring.
The CIF-SS office took a preemptive approach toward making the move in hosting its two major postseason affairs out of Los Angeles County, thus the move to ensure a change in postseason sites.
Trabuco Hills boys head coach JT Ayers and girls head coach Dennis Kelly assume the responsibility of meet managers for the Division 1 Prelims. Meanwhile, Keith Chann has taken the position of co-meet manager, with Estancia's Kevin Rosales, overseeing the Division 3 Prelims at Estancia High. Ventura head coach Kory Anderson takes over the duties of meet manager for the Division 2 Prelims.
Teams On The Move
Edison, Elsinore, Garden Grove, Hueneme, Peninsula, Redlands, and Sunny Hills make the move from Division 2 to Division 1.Corona, Long Beach Jordan, Murrieta Valley, Newport Harbor, Ontario, Westlake, and Woodbridge make the move into Division 2.
Moving into Division 3, Bonita, Calabasas, and Moorpark will play considerable roles in competing for postseason hardware.
San Marino and Rim of the World will join the group of 165 schools in Division 4 that have less than 1020 students.
Upcoming
The CIF-SS office will also soon release the adjusted at-large standards for the upcoming season as well as the minimum standards for 2nd- and 3rd-place entries from each respective league.
In regard to 'at-large' marks and with a considerable drop in the marks from the 2021 postseason, only nine (of the 128 events) witnessed an improvement when taking the average of the past three postseasons.
With the minimum standards, expect a similar trend to continue as well with the number of postseason entries in 2022 and overall depth experiencing a considerable drop-off as well.
Mark Gardner is the Southern Section editor for MileSplitCA.