What is Our Destiny?

On Monday, November 9, 2009 our destiny will be determined. The Championship bracket will be announced and 63 teams will have achieved their goal, while many others get left behind… If we win our next 4 games there should be nothing getting in the way of our chances at playoffs. But this blog should definitely make it clear that nothing is definite for an independent school. If we do not get a bid, and all the pieces add up that we should, I will blog about it. It will be known.

To follow our journey check out http://www.chapmanathletics.com/sports/wsoc/index

Letter: I want a CHANGE

Dear Lorin Huffman,

I am a student-athlete at Chapman University and I want you personally to know and understand why Chapman should be in the SCIAC. We are serious about being accepted in the SCIAC and we do not take this issue lightly. We, Chapman University follow the SCIAC rules about when training starts for fall season. Since we are an independent school we could follow the NCAA rules, which states that we can start training before school starts. This would be a HUGE advantage to start training early and getting the team together before the pre-season starts. However, we stay faithful to the SCIAC rules of not starting until school starts, so that we do not have an unfair advantage - we want to make the playing field even with the other 8 SCIAC teams.

Also the rumors are not true. Chapman’s football team did not have a player that didn’t go to Chapman. It was a rumor that started once we became a DIII school in 1993. I do not want the rumors hindering our chances of getting into the SCIAC.

Also I have researched the NCAA Handout and I found that the SCIAC is the smallest Automatic-Qualifying Conference for DIII Women’s Soccer with 7 teams (Cal tech is not included) and the largest conference includes 14 teams. This means that adding Chapman to the SCIAC would not make your league any bigger compared to other conferences around the nation. I understand that this issue comes down to the fact of why would the schools in SCAC want another school to compete with for the playoff spot? But think of the rivalry and competition that Chapman University will create. We will add another school that will give the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference a good name. We follow the SCIAC rules, we do not cheat around the system, and we play hard and fair. We are the perfect university to add to SCIAC.

Sincerely,

panther_athlete

Dont Worry Be Happy - Unless You get Cheated

I know that some of you are thinking…why don’t you just play the game and stop worrying about everyone else. If you are thinking that the most qualified teams will make it to the playoffs…I am sad to say you are also wrong. There are several examples of teams at Chapman having the record, but being shut down. I interviewed Justin Riley, a Junior on the Chapman Men’s Basketball team. His testimonial shows the unfair advantage that athletes have to deal with and he brings up many key points.

KEY POINTS:

- 24-3 impressive record or so we thought.

- I made a case for that reasoning, so I went into the boards to educate myself on how the playoff system works and one guy in particular I spoke to wasn’t able to give me a definite answer.

- This is bogus!

- 3 seasons technically: 1) Preseason: you can loose all of those games and then you enter 2) league play and you finish 4^th and you get to go on to 3) league championship which you can win an upset and go to the playoffs.

- Unfortunately we are judged on a game we play in November and January on the same level.

- Strength of schedule case: what are you supposed to do when teams don’t want to schedule you. Once January starts all the SCIAC season starts, and they don’t want to play us. We’re looked upon as making a crappy schedule, but what are we supposed to do? (To clarify, Justin explains how UCSC is a weak team in men’s basketball, however, for women’s soccer they are one of the top programs.)

[Justin’s hands are so huge that it made the table shake a lot, I apologize for the camera movement)

Heartbreaking Loss

Words cannot even explain what I am feeling rite now. We lost to La Verne 2-1 whose record is (4-9-1). We never in a million years should have lost to this team. Plain and simple…they are BAD, but it was one of those games in soccer when the ball just wouldn’t go in the back of the net for us.

This situation is exactly why I am writing this blog. If we were in the SCIAC, this would have just been a normal loss…it sucks to lose, but you get over it. But for us, as an independent school this loss might have cost us our chances at playoffs. EVERY game matters to us. This loss hurts 10 times more because we have no league to rely back on. Granted we did lose and we must take the hit, but the frustrating thing is this: teams in the SCIAC can loose and they know that their season isn't over. They know that all they have to do is be one of the top 4 out of 8 teams in SCIAC, win the tournament, and then AUTOMATICALLY go to playoffs. While we, little Chapman University has to sit and bite our nails waiting to see if the NCAA playoff committee has picked us. We have to constantly check other teams stats and compare and see who beat who and this and that.

The worst thing is that today the Regional NCAA rankings came out, and we are now ranked 2^nd in the west region. We are the top ranked California team. This loss will take us to who knows where on the rankings – I just know that our chances of making it to playoffs have slimmed a lot. All athletes at Chapman have to deal with the stress of playoffs and I am definitely feeling it right now.

Chapman Lacks School SPIRIT

There is one thing everyone knows we lack at Chapman – school spirit. Chapman is such an amazing school all around, but there is no school spirit. There is definitely pride in this school, but there are no screaming students cheering at every home - there is not a huge student section that gets the crowd pumped up. It is not the “big thing” like at USC to go to an athletics event. And I know that we do not go to a big DI school and have the record, but I think the underlying reason why Chapman lacks school spirit is that we do not have any big rival schools. There is not one school that everyone gets pumped about when we play them in any sport. This issue affects everyone in the school. If Chapman is a part of the SCIAC, there will more competition, there will be more rivalry, and there will be more school spirit.

It is disappointing to play a college sport and have on average of 30-40 people in the stands cheering. Last year there was an attempt to create some school spirit – the Panther Prowl. This new spirit group organized by Associated Students and First Year Council encourages students to get excited at games. It worked for the Homecoming Game, however, it slowly lost its strength and by the end of the season, it went back to normal Chapman athletics games – without a student cheering section. At this years Homecoming Game, I heard more parents yelling and getting excited than the students. For more information on the Panther Prowl check out http://www.thepantheronline.com/article.php?id=762

Chapman University + SCIAC = school spirit!!!

Chapman 2 UCSC 1

We beat UCSC 2-1!!! It was such a roller coaster game - UCSC scored first and then Chapman battled back to score 2 goals and win the game! UCSC was previously 10-2 (10 wins, 2 losses) and we were 9-3 (9 wins, 3 loses). After this battle, both UCSC and Chapman have a record of 10-3. As the announcer said at the beginning of the game, “This is a game of two powerhouses who battle year after year.” But this year was different – Chapman University came out of top and battled with heart and strength. This is such a big accomplishment because we have not beaten UCSC since our seniors have been here and to go out with a win like that is unexplainable.

Like I said in my previous post, this game would make or break our season. The win brought us one step closer to making it to the playoffs. But because we are an independent school, the road is not that easy. I researched the 2009 DIVISION III Women’s Soccer Championship Handbook to understand the rules of the voting process and why the road to the playoffs is harder for independent schools. There are 409 Institutions eligible for NCAA championship and the process of being one of those teams is very complicated. The handbook explains how there are 3 pools:

Pool A: composed of the conference champions from each conference that meets the requirements for automatic qualification.

The SCIAC is one of the 40 conferences. Lets say Claremont, Redlands, Cal Lutheran and Occidental are the top 4 teams at the end of league play. They play each other in the conference tournament and Claremont comes out on top and is the conference champion of SCIAC. Claremont gets an automatic bid to the playoffs. As an independent school even if we beat Claremont and all of the SCIAC schools, we have no chance of getting that automatic bid like Claremont does.

Pool B: composed of independent institutions and institutions that are members of conferences that do not meet the requirements for automatic qualification.

This is where Chapman University gets placed.

Pool C: reserved for institutions from automatic-qualifying conferences that are not their conference champion and the remaining teams in Pool B.

This is where the other 3 schools, like Redlands, Cal Lutheran and Occidental, the schools who made the top 4, but did not win the conference tournament get placed. Basically, the SCIAC schools have 2 chances to make it to the playoffs and we only have one. It is not a fair system.

When teams are placed into the pools, the selection criteria comes into play. I will give you the basics, which is still pretty complicated, which goes to show how the process is not straightforward and how easy it is for a well qualified team to slip by. For full details visit http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/champ_handbooks/soccer/2009/09_3_w_soccer.pdf

Primary Criteria

- Win-loss percentage against regional opponents.

- Strength-of schedule (only contests versus regional competition)

o Opponents’ Average Winning Percentage (OWP)

o Opponents’ Opponents’ Average Winning Percentage (OOWP)

- In region head-to-head competition

- In-region results versus common regional opponents.

- In-region results versus regionally ranked teams.

Secondary Criteria: If the evaluation of the primary criteria does not result in a decision, the secondary criteria will be reviewed. All the criteria listed will be evaluated (not listed in priority order).

- Out-of-region head-to-head competition

- Overall Division III win-loss percentage

- Results versus common non Division III opponents.

- Results versus all Division III ranked teams.

- Overall win-loss percentage

- Results versus all common opponents

- Overall DIII Strength of Schedule

- Should a committee find that evaluation of a teams win-loss percentage during the last 25% of the season is applicable, it may adopt such criteria with approval from the championships committee

UCSC Rivalry

We play University of California, Santa Cruz tonight. This is the BIGGEST game on our schedule. At 3pm we will face off on a game that can make or break our season. In the West Region, there are only 3 independent schools: Chapman University, University of California, Santa Cruz and University of Dallas. We are all competing against each other for a bid – hence why this is the most important game of the season (especially since we do not have the opportunity to play University of Dallas due to distance). If we win tonight we will be one step closer to the playoffs.

Rumors Are NOT True

Before I started this blog, I only knew the surface things of the SCIAC. All that I cared about is that the odds are not in our favor of making it to the playoffs. I have heard rumors of why we aren’t in the SCIAC, but I wanted to get my facts straight. I interviewed the Associate Director of Athletics at Chapman in his office in the Lastinger Athletics Complex and I learned the ins and outs of SCIAC and our situation.

Q: Why is it so much easier for a SCIAC team to make it to the playoffs rather than us?

A: The 8 teams in SCIAC play each other during regular season. The top 4 teams at the end of season play each other in a conference tournament and the winner of the tournament automatically gets a bid to go the playoffs. Whereas Chapman is competing with all the others school in DIII vying for a spot in the playoffs.

Q: Is it true that we got kicked out of the SCIAC because of Chapman’s football team? To give a background story, every since I was a freshmen here, people have been telling me that Chapman got kicked out of the SCIAC because there was a guy on the football team who didn’t even go to Chapman. I recall our coaches even saying this too.

A: No that is a rumor that you need to dispel. Chapman went from being a DII school to a DIII school in 1992 and we created a football team. Chapman started off on the right foot and had high stats, which led people to rumor that one of the football players didn’t even go to Chapman. And as a school we have never been in the SCIAC, just a couple sports.

Q: For Chapman Women’s soccer why do we a horrible schedule of 4 games in 6 days?

A: This is one of the reasons why Chapman should be a member of SCIAC - it is in the benefit of the safety of the players. Because we are an independent school, we do not have a set schedule. When a school is in a league, like the SCIAC, they have a schedule of when you play all the teams in that league. The problem for independent schools is that we need to play all the teams in SCIAC, so that when it comes to playoff time, we can say “We have beat Occidental in the season and since they are going to the playoffs, we should also.” We need them more than they need us and since we are not in a league, we have to make our schedule around the other teams schedules. This forces us to not have enough rest time in between games, therefore we may end up with a bad schedule like yours this season and have 4 games in 6 days. That is not healthy for any team at any level.

Change Agent

In order for Chapman University to become part of the SCIAC, we as a school, must receive enough votes from the 8 other schools in the league. I am focusing on the Executive Director, Lorin Huffman as my change agent. As the Executive Director of SCIAC, she is the one who ultimately makes the decisions, and she will be the one who has influence on the 8 others schools opinions of Chapman. I want to convince or at least make aware to her the reasons why Chapman should become the 9^th school in SCIAC.

SCIAC

One fault of attending Chapman University is the athletics. No it is not the athletics program, or the facilities, or the teams - it is the fact that Chapman University is an independent Division III school. Being an independent school means that we are not in a league. We have to compete with the other 409 schools to earn a spot in the playoffs. The playoffs are what every team fights for – to be the best DIII team in the nation. There are many disadvantages of being an independent college and being on the Women’s Soccer team here at Chapman, I know first hand how frustrating it is to not have maximum opportunities to make it to the playoffs.

To fix this problem I want Chapman to be part of the SCIAC, Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (http://thesciac.org/landing/index) – the league of other DIII schools in this area. In 1915, five Southern California institutions combined to form the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The purpose of this conference is “promoting and governing competition in intercollegiate sports with the fundamental principle of the conference being to encourage the highest ideals of amateur sports in an environment of high academic standards.” Since the start, the schools have changed and there are now 8 teams: California Institute of Technology, Occidental College, Pomona-Pitzer Colleges, University of Redlands, Whittier College, California Lutheran University, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges, and University of La Verne. The reason why being in a league is so important is that they have a chance to get an automatic qualifier bid to the playoffs, while we have to hope and pray at the end of the season that they pick our school based off of many factors. I want Chapman to be the 9^th team in the SCIAC to better the league and to better our school. It is not fair that we have to play each game knowing that one loss could ruin our chances of making it to playoffs. I want a change.