Beyond The Game

Prep2Prep annually honors the top athletes, teams and coaches in Northern California with the Preppy Awards. And while this past season was obviously impacted by the pandemic - costing state championships in basketball as well as the vast majority of the spring season - there are still plenty of deserving candidates for the top awards and we discuss them in this episode.

Assuming all goes well in California over the next few months, the 2020-21 high school sports calendar will be much more compressed than usual. This puts a strain on multi-sport athletes, facility management and other areas related to the administration of high school sports. Today, Nate, Harold and Danny speak with prolific softball/volleyball coach Margaret Fitzgerald (Cloverdale) and new co-athletic director and longtime volleyball coach Margi Beima (Sacred Heart Cathedral) about the challenges they face during the upcoming school seasons.

Of the 10 sections in the California Interscholastic Federation, only the Northern Section decided against implementing the recommended CIF sports calendar for the 2020-21 school year. Today Nate, Harold and Danny speak with Northern Section football coaches Ryan Reynolds (Sutter) and Mark Cooley (Pleasant Valley-Chico) about the situations surrounding their schools and preparation for the upcoming season and how the Northern Section might address the divide between big and small schools during these unprecedented times.

Nate, Harold and Danny welcome California Interscholastic Federation Executive Director Ron Nocetti to the podcast to discuss the watershed announcement issued July 20 regarding the modified calendar for California high school sports for the 2020-21 school year. We discuss how the committee came to its ultimate decision, the ramifications for multi-sport athletes, temporary CIF bylaw changes, contingency plans if the situation around the pandemic does not improve and much more.

Today Nate and Danny welcome a panel of high school football coaches Robert Hubbard, Ed Washington, George Jackson and Joe Bates, who have founded a Facebook Group called "Black Football Coaches Unified", whose mission is to help black coaches create relationships and form a brotherhood with the hope of earning more opportunities in the coaching world. Over the course of just a few months, the group has grown from the original four founders to nearly 9,000 members.

Today Harold and Danny begin the discourse on race relations with high school boys basketball coaches Lou Richie (Bishop O'Dowd) and Tim Kennedy (Archbishop Mitty). We discuss several topics including registering high school students to vote and the challenges of communicating with players during these turbulent times.

Football in the spring? Baseball in the fall? There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the fate of high school sports in California and other sports, but that doesn't stop us from speculating on what might happen. We go through a series of potential scenarios ahead of the fateful July 20 date, at which time the CIF is expected to announce the schedules for high school sports.

A vast majority of high school girls basketball coaches are male, but three prominent women have taken over positions at high-profile basketball schools. Today we speak about opportunities for women in coaching with legendary coach Sue Phillips of Archbishop Mitty of San Jose along with former WNBA player Alexis Gray-Lawson, the new coach at St. Joseph Notre Dame and a pair of coaches who are taking over at their respective alma maters: Alle Moreno (St. Mary's-Stockton) and Maya Fok (St. Ignatius-San Francisco).

With several counties and districts issuing highly restrictive return to action policies for high school sports, we speak with Sacramento Bee high school sports reporter Joe Davidson, who detailed the recommendations of the Sacramento County of Education to effectively call off high school sports in 2020-21 - with a major caveat. We also pay a visit to San Mateo High School and Clayton Valley Charter High School as those football teams begin informal workouts.

Today we continue our discussion on the future of high school football with highly accomplished Bay Area high school football coaches Paul Cronin (Cardinal Newman), Justin Alumbaugh (De La Salle), Paul Rosa (Wilcox) and Ryan Partridge (Liberty)