WACC delivers a more competitive league

This year CVHS is no longer a part of the Hayward Area Athletic League (HAAL) and instead is now part of the newly formed West Alameda County Conference (WACC).

In addition to CVHS, the conference will be made up of Alameda, Arroyo, Berkeley, O’Dowd, Encinal, Hayward, Mt. Eden, Piedmont, San Leandro, San Lorenzo and Tennyson high schools.

“I’m really glad they’ve finally evened out the league,” said varsity wrestler Rebecca Busch. “There was such a huge difference in competition between league and NCS. The new division is more fair and will help our teams improve.”

The North Coast Section (NCS) and its member schools review the leagues within the section every four years, and although few changes have been made to HAAL over the past 16 years, directors and administrators recently decided that there was a growing imbalance of competition between the HAAL schools.

To fix this, member schools and the NCS governing body decided to do away with the old league and approved a 12 team “super conference” that would even out the competition.

WACC is divided into two leagues for each sport. The most competitive teams belong in the Foothill League, and teams that are still developing and are therefore less competitive are in the Shoreline League.

All of the CVHS teams will compete in the Foothill League. Most teams will still have the opportunity to compete with all the schools in the conference, but CVHS will play Foothill schools twice as often as Shoreline schools.

“I think it will be a good thing for our school, especially for some sports,” said softball coach and PE teacher Marie Gray. “It will just be a little bit more competitive.”

There have been some concerns as to how the change in league will affect our school’s ability to qualify for NCS and state competitions. Although this new league will be much more competitive than HAAL, the increased level of competition in league finals should serve to help better prepare CVHS for the intensity of NCS and state championships.

“Nothing has really changed. A league meet is just another league meet with a couple different schools now,” said senior track and cross country runner Daniel Nourot.

Some student athletes are nevertheless disgruntled by the change in competition.

Although the boundaries have changed, traveling distances to schools will not increase significantly, with Berkeley High School being the furthest north and Tennyson High School the furthest south.

It will be interesting to see how teams will measure up to the new level of competition presented in WACC, but we can trust that the mighty Trojans will give it their all.