Conference and League Structure
Competition is broken down into a system of conferences and leagues which seek to organize schools first by size/competitiveness, and then by geographic proximity. [1]
- North Coast Section
- Bay Area Conference - 27 schools
- Bay Counties League - 7 schools
- Bay Counties League - West - 6 schools
- Bay Counties League - East - 7 schools
- Bay Counties League - Central - 7 schools
- Bay Shore Conference - 33 schools
- Coastal Mountain Conference - 24 schools
- North Central League I - 8 schools
- North Central League II - 7 schools
- North Central League III - 9 schools
- Humboldt-Del Norte League - 12 schools
- Big 5 – 5 schools
- Little 7 - 7 schools
- Redwood Empire Conference - 29 schools
- Marin County Athletic League - 9 schools
- North Bay League - 13 schools
- Vine Valley Athletic League - 7 schools
- Valley Conference - 30 schools
- Non-League Affiliate Member Schools - 20 schools
- Single-sport waiver schools
Playoff Structure
The section employs 5 different classes, 4A, 3A, 2A, A, and B. Depending on the sport, the "classes" may be represented by Divisions: I, II, III, IV, V, & VI, with DI being the largest schools, and DVI being the smallest. Some sports, including football, split the 3A and 2A sections into East Bay, for most of the Section's Bay Area schools, and Redwood Empire, for schools from Marin County north to the Oregon border. The section has championships in badminton, baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, volleyball, water polo, and wrestling.
Northern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's 58 counties. Its main population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Sacramento area, the Redding, California, area south of the Cascade Range, and the Metropolitan Fresno area. Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta, and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.
Marin Academy is a private college preparatory high school in San Rafael, California. Located on the campus that for decades housed the San Rafael Military Academy prior to its closure, Marin Academy was founded in 1971 with 118 faculty members and a student body of 449. Marin Academy is one of the most competitive private high schools in the Bay Area. In the 2015–2016 school year, Marin Academy accepted one in four students who applied.
Miramonte High School is a public high school located in Orinda, California, United States. It is part of the Acalanes Union High School District. The school has a college-preparatory program, with 15 Advanced Placement courses offered.
Terra Linda High School is a public secondary school located in Terra Linda, San Rafael, California, United States. In 2006, it was named a California Distinguished School. The school is part of the San Rafael City Schools school district. The official school mascot is the Trojan.
San Marin High School is a public high school located in Novato, California, in the United States.
Novato High School (NHS) is a public high school located in Novato, California, in Marin County. It is one of three high schools part of the Novato Unified School District.
Tamalpais High School is a public secondary school located in Mill Valley, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is named after nearby Mount Tamalpais, which rises almost 2,500 feet (760 m) above Mill Valley.
The Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League is an interscholastic athletic association in Western Pennsylvania. It is District 7 of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association.
The Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) is a non-profit, board-governed organization that regulates high school athletics and competitive activities via athletic conferences in the U.S. state of Oregon, providing equitable competition among its members, both public and private. The OSAA is based in Wilsonville.
The Bay Area Conference is a school athletic conference located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The league is a member of the North Coast Section, one of ten sections that comprise the California Interscholastic Federation.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) is the governing body of athletics and activities for secondary education schools in the state of Washington. As of February 2011, the private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization consists of nearly 800 member high schools and middle/junior high schools, both public and private.
The Pocket Athletic Conference (PAC) is a high school athletic conference in Southwestern Indiana with its headquarters at Forest Park. Most of the conference's 13 members are mainly Class 2A and 3A public high schools currently located in Daviess, Dubois, Gibson, Perry, Pike, Posey, Spencer, and Warrick counties. Only one, Tecumseh, is a 1A and as such operates its football program independently of the PAC and remains independent in the sport, playing schools much closer to its size than its much larger borderline 3A, 3A, or 4A fellow members.
The Coastal Mountain Conference or CMC is an athletic conference for secondary schools in Mendocino, Lake, Napa and Sonoma Counties that competes in the North Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation. Member schools are currently organized into three leagues based on school size and various other criteria found in the conference's bylaws. League assignments are automatically reevaluated in all even numbered years or at any other time by written request of a member school, provided no other members file an objection. Conference champions from all three leagues advance in each sport to post-season competition in the North Coast Section's Division V bracket, of which the winner gains admission to the Class A state championship tournament.
An eight-member IHSAA-Sanctioned Athletic Conference within the Northeastern Indiana counties of Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, Wells, and Whitley. The conference was started in 1989 as the Northeast Hoosier Conference when six schools from the Northeastern Indiana Athletic Conference joined with two schools from the Allen County Athletic Conference. When the smaller six schools decided to pull out of the conference in 2015, the conference essentially ceased to exist, forcing the much larger Carroll and Homestead into joining the Summit Athletic Conference. The remaining schools, while settling on the current league name, added Huntington North of the North Central Conference and Leo of the Allen County Athletic Conference, who are more similar in size to the rest of the schools. While the six NEHC schools technically dropped out, they never actually left the league, having succeeded in forcing out the two large Fort Wayne schools, ended up staying in the league. This is not an unheard of tactic, as most notably Ohio's Chagrin Valley Conference pulled virtually the same move around the same time.
The Siouxland Conference is a ten team high school athletic conference in the northwest corner of Iowa, consisting of schools ranging from the smallest class (1A) to the third largest class (3A), and known for its prominence in small school basketball.
The West Central Activities Conference is a high school athletic conference made up of 2A and 3A schools in Central Iowa. Currently there are 13 men's programs and 12 women's programs in the league.
The Big Rivers Conference of Illinois was a high school football-exclusive athletic conference that existed from the 1999 through the 2012 football season. Upon its dissolution, it comprised ten teams located in the northwest and north-central portions of the state. It was a member of the Illinois High School Association, and its sister conference for other sports was the Three Rivers Conference. As of the 2013-14 school year, in tandem with a conference expansion, Big Rivers has been reabsorbed into the Three Rivers Conference. This expansion negotiated full membership status for member schools in all Three Rivers Conference sports, thereby negating the need for a football conference carve-out.
The Sac-Joaquin Section (SJS) is the governing body of public and private high school athletics in parts of Northern San Joaquin Valley, California. Its geographic area also covers the California portion of the Lake Tahoe region; however, three schools in that area—North Tahoe, Truckee, and South Tahoe High Schools—are instead members of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association due to their relative isolation from other California schools and their proximity to more populated areas in Nevada, especially in the Reno area. It is one of ten sections that compose the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF). The SJS is split into seven divisions, each comprising several leagues.
