fall tournaments

Every year for as long as we care to remember, Rich Goldberg, who runs ARC (American Roundball Corp.), has hosted a fall high school league for teams consisting of high school players. These are technically not "high school" teams, largely because of the Southern Section rule which prohibits high school coaches from coaching their own players during the fall, but for the most part the teams who have participated in the fall HS leagues have consisted of teams made up of varsity players who all attend the same schools playing against other teams made up of players from an opposing school. Nothing wrong with that under the CIF-SS's rather antiquated rule (in fact the CIF-SS is the only section which has such a rule....but that's another story).

But there will be no fall league this year for ARC, at least not the type of fall league that we've been used to seeing run by ARC.

This year, ARC, in response to several different issues has dropped the fall league, at least for high varsity school teams, and replaced it with a series of weekend tournaments. Each tournament will be limited to 8 teams per location and each team participating will be guaranteed 3 games for an entry fee of $250.00. These tournaments are scheduled to take place all over SoCal, most on Sunday, but a couple of Saturday events (two at Rolling Hills Prep), and many will be taking place simulataneously at different locations on the same weekends. Teams can enter at different locations each weekend, but of course, you'll need to pay a separate fee for each tournament.

We spoke briefly with Rich Goldberg about the concept of altering the fall league this past spring as a result of several problems with scheduling, team attendance, and the like, and it looks like he's decided to make the change. There were a number of factors at work driving the change: First and foremost was the fact that high school teams were "over-subscribing" to the traditional Sunday league play, which actually resulted in fewer teams showing up for games. In the past, a team would sign up for a series of games in the league, one game each Sunday over the course of 7 or 8 weekends. As a general rule, a team's games would be scheduled at different times every weekend, and at different locations (unless you were lucky enough to be playing for the team from the "host" school whose gym was being used, such as North Hollywood HS, in which case you always knew when and where your games would be played each week). The result of the uncertain and fluctuating schedules, irregular game times and locations was that a number of teams became no-shows, resulting forfeits, which was not a good thing if you happened to be on a team which wanted to play a game and had paid the league fee.... Likewise, some schools (well, not exactly the schools, but these informally organized teams of players from a particular school...you get the picture) were entering two, sometimes three teams in the league....which was great from a financial standpoint, but a disaster, because it was difficult enough to get one team to show up, but two or three.....again, more forfeits, fewer games played, more unhappy players, parents and coaches.

In short, it was time to re-think the system of how the league would run....

So, in talking it over with many interested parent-coaches, players and the ARC board, Goldberg decided to give the weekend tournament concept a try once again (actually it's far from a new concept, and ARC used to run weekend tournaments back in their heyday when ARC had players like Jason Kidd flying down every weekend to LA to play).

	Boys Varsity Tournaments	Girls Varsity Tournaments
Sept 30	Burbanks HS
Oct. 7	Burbank HS Canyon Anaheim HS Ocean View HS Corona HS	Chaminade HS
Oct. 14	Calabasas HS Hart HS	Burbank HS Corona HS
Oct. 20		Rolling Hills Prep HS
Oct. 21	Burbank HS Canyon Anaheim HS Corona HS
Oct. 27	Rolling Hills Prep HS
Oct. 28	Calabasas HS Hart HS Canyon Anaheim HS Ocean View HS	Burbank HS Chaminade HS Corona HS
Nov. 4	Hart HS