By Lauren Farberman
Staff Writer
The California Interscholastic Federation is an annual opportunity for high school varsity sports teams to compete with fellow top performing athletes. Coaches alter their varsity teams when the CIF season begins. The rearrangement of varsity teams for CIF season is clearly ethical and fair because the alterations that are meant to provide junior varsity players with varsity training, ensuring the team has the best chance of winning, as well as creating equal opportunities for all student athletes.
Junior varsity players that get promoted to varsity during the CIF season have the opportunity to train and improve with a more advanced team, without competing in CIF and taking away a varsity team member’s position. This allows student athletes increased practice time with the varsity coaching staff and gives them a head start for their future with their team. Additionally, these students get the first hand experience of what it is like to play at the highest level of high school sports.
According to Costa Rugby coach, Duke Dulgarian, one of the neatest aspects of the CIF Playoffs is when a coach has the ability to bring up younger players to the varsity level. This is done to reward young players that have worked hard to improve themselves and have been able to show improvement in both practice and games. As a reward for theses athlete’s hard work, the beneficial experience they receive poses no unfair treatment to varsity players in CIF.
Another justification for rearranging varsity teams is to guarantee a team has the optimal chance of performing well in CIF games. According to Dulgarian Coaches are hired to win games by developing a team student athletes to play at their highest level. By using this technique, coaches set their team as a whole as a priority, by providing the team with the most qualified players.
Additionally, according to Costa varsity tennis coach Joe Ciusalli, playing time is earned and not given based on a misguided notion of fairness. Even if a senior on varsity gets replaced by a younger student, it is due to level of talent and ability to win CIF and not based on seniority. This is done to ensure the best players are participating in CIF, posing no unfair disadvantages to anyone.
According to Ciusalli, senior nights are good opportunities to give seniors an opportunity to play, but not at the expense of the success of the team. Senior nights give seniors the opportunity to play among themselves but not at the risk of CIF, which gives all student athletes equal CIF opportunity, regardless of age or grade level.
Unlike most high school sports, varsity football has unique CIF age limitations for players. Each year it is possible that due to age, players as young as freshman become eligible for varsity during CIF who were not eligible during the regular season. Players can become eligible because CIF sets certain age requirements for varsity. In instances where a player is more advanced than varsity members, it only proves beneficial to the team for that player to be added to varsity for CIF season, to provide the team as a whole with an optimal opportunity of success.
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