Santa Rosa Press Democrat // News for California's North Bay and Redwood Empire

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NBL votes for winter soccer

By RICH RUPPRECHT
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The landscape of high school soccer in the Redwood Empire changed dramatically 
Thursday with the North Bay League principals voting 7-1 to switch soccer from 
the fall to the winter beginning next year. 

NBL athletic directors had voted 7-1 earlier in the week for the change, which 
means North Bay League boys’ and girls’ soccer teams will roughly play a 
November-February season and a postseason that will include East Bay schools.

Maria Sugiyama, interim commissioner of the NBL, said Friday coaches and ADs are 
excited about playing schools from outside the area in the playoffs and joining a 
state championship tournament which could be in place in two years.

Currently, southern California schools play a winter soccer schedule, with their 
regional tournaments ending in mid-March. The CIF hopes to begin a state playoff 
system for soccer for the 2009-2010 school year.

“This will offer a different type and wider competition, playing East Bay schools,” 
Sugiyama said.

Sugiyama also said that the number of artificial surfaced fields at NBL schools 
(Santa Rosa, Montgomery and Piner), and with NBL schools adding the surface in 
the future (Rancho Cotate and Elsie Allen) means that weather is less a factor 
for winter soccer.

“Schools with the turf also offered the other NBL schools (without turf) the use 
of their fields,” she said.

The NBL, however, is the only league to vote in favor of switching to winter. The 
Sonoma County League, Marin County Athletic, Coastal Mountain Conference and 
Humboldt-Del Norte leagues all plan on continuing to play in the fall, at least 
next season. The MCAL girls and some Bay Area schools currently play in the spring.

That also means the end of any NBL-SCL preseason matches. NBL teams will have to 
play East Bay schools in the preseason, which will probably lead to more travel.

The new winter season will cause a difference in availability of select or club 
players. By playing in the winter those players will have to choose between their 
high school and club teams. They can’t play both at the same time.

During the fall, select players could play both high school and club because the 
high schools were playing “out of season,” according to CIF rules. Now, though, a 
club player could only play one, high school or club, during the winter months 
because NBL teams would be playing “in season.”

Some significant club tournaments (Phoenix and San Diego) during the winter months, 
which attract a large number of college coaches, might make that decision difficult 
to make, plus the added pressure from the club teams to play an entire season.
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