Missing from this opening week of the girls volleyball playoffs is Beckman.
The Patriots finished fourth in the five-team South Coast League with a 3-5 league record. They had a 19-13 overall record.
The top three teams in a five-team league like the South Coast automatically qualify for the CIF Southern Section girls volleyball playoffs. The other two can qualify as at-large teams if there is room in their playoff bracket for at-large teams. Beckman, as a fourth-place team, could get into the playoffs only as an at-large team.
The other four South Coast League teams made the playoffs, including last-place Trabuco Hills that was 1-7 in league.
It is a quirky rule that kept Beckman out of the playoffs.
Teams are placed into CIF Southern Section girls volleyball playoff divisions according to their rating supplied by Massey Ratings System. The top 12 rated teams were placed into Division 1. Then 32 teams were placed into Division 2.
The 32nd and final team sent to the 32-team Division 2 bracket was Rosary, which is one place above Beckman in the final Massey ratings. That pushed Beckman into Division 3 as Division 3’s top-rated team. But because of a CIF-SS rule that states that a division cannot start with an at-large team, Beckman did not get into the playoffs.
The same rule kept Servite out of the CIF-SS boys golf playoffs this past spring.
It is the first time in Darin McBain’s 19 years coaching Beckman girls volleyball that the team has not been in the playoffs.
Beckman had won four its final five regular-season games, with only a loss to league champion San Juan Hills over that stretch.
“Can’t make sense of it,” McBain texted about his team’s predicament. “And if we would have got a D3 bid, I think we would have gone very deep. Playing well down the stretch.”
