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Berkeley-De Anza makeup game depends on NCS

By Jared Green Daily Planet Staff
Friday October 12, 2001

Officials from Berkeley High and De Anza High have agreed that the school’s football teams will make up their cancelled game if the North Coast Section pushes back the beginning of the playoffs. 

Friday’s game was cancelled when no officials showed up for the 7 p.m. varsity kickoff. According to a source close to the situation, Alameda Contra Costa Athletic League officials botched the scheduling of officials. 

The NCS playoffs are scheduled to begin on Nov. 16. The Fremont Athletic League has already requested that the playoffs be moved back due to the cancellation of games after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The FAL cancelled all games that weekend, although most other games in Northern California went ahead as planned. Berkeley High, for instance, played James Logan High on Sept. 14. 

In a meeting earlier this week, ACCAL officials decided to throw their support behind the FAL’s plan in order to allow the Berkeley-De Anza game to be played. 

If the NCS does decide to move the playoffs back at its next meeting on Oct. 19, the Berkeley-De Anza game would be played on Nov. 16. 

Moving the playoffs back would also mean moving the date of the championship games from Nov. 30 or Dec. 1 to Dec. 7 or 8. That would take football, a fall sport, even further into the winter sports schedule, a serious inconvenience for student-athletes who play both football and a winter sport. 

“I really don’t know what’s going to happen,” Bissell said Wednesday. “No determination has been made what will happen if the game isn’t made up, and unless the NCS pushes the playoffs back, I don’t see how that will happen.”