FOOTBALL: PAL Makes Statement in Playoffs

The Peninsula Athletic League had just one Central Coast Section football title to show for a four-year span going into 2010.

Let's just say the 18-team "Super League" made up for lost time.

Two PAL programs won CCS championships and a third finished runner-up.

Terra Nova, the two-time defending PAL Bay Division champion, won its first section crown since 1988 by in the Division III final.

Sacred Heart Prep, runner-up in the PAL Bay, claimed its inaugural CCS title with in the Division IV championship.

And Sequoia, which was making its first playoff appearance since 1994, advanced all the way to the Division II title game. The Cherokees, who claimed the PAL Lake, their first league championship since the modern playoff format began in 1972, in the final.

Of the other six PAL programs that qualified for the playoffs, two others lost to league rivals (and eventual champions) in the semifinals. in a battle of the PAL's Ocean and Bay champions, and . And in a dramatic Division IV semifinal defeat to Carmel.

Overall, the PAL matched its strong 2004 showing, when Woodside and Burlingame won the Medium and Small School Division titles, respectively. But in terms of sheer breadth, the PAL outdid any year since the 1996 merger with the North Peninsula League that returned the league teams to competing with programs outside the Peninsula for CCS titles.

Before the merger, the NPL and PAL played annual CCS title games for a 10-year period.

The 2010 season may not have been the PAL's best football year ever, but certainly qualifies as one of the best in a long time.

"It has to be," South San Francisco coach Frank Moro said. "I don't think it's been this good since we went back to the old format."

Moro, whose involvement in the PAL spans five decades, isn't sure if it's the best year ever for the PAL. He's partial to 1980, a year the South San Francisco team he played for won the CCS Continental Division title, with Carlmont losing to Live Oak of Morgan Hill in the Metro Division final.

Longtime San Mateo County Times columnist and former sports editor John Horgan considers the early 1960s - a period when Sequoia won 33 consecutive games and perennially dominant Westmoor and Capuchino ruled the Northern California prep football landscape - the "apex" of PAL football.

Horgan said shifting divisional and league alignments make it impossible to compare the PAL's accomplishments of this year to what the league has done in the past.

"The PAL is a different animal than it was some time ago," Horgan said. "You can't compare it to what it was before this gigantic merger."

He said the addition of powerful The King's Academy and Sacred Heart Prep programs in 2008 has altered the league's dynamics.

"You add those two schools into the mix and it changes the league," Horgan said.

"Since they've joined it, this is the best year, but I wouldn't go any farther than that."

But if nothing else, the PAL has gained some credibility after its strong playoff showing.

"At one point, people weren't giving us a whole lot of respect because we were playing ourselves for the section championship," Moro said of the 10-year period in which the NPL played the PAL for a section title.

"People said we can't compete with the WCAL and we can't compete with the De Anza and some of these other leagues.

"After these playoffs I think you've got to say we're one of the strongest leagues in this section."

Sacred Heart Prep coach Pete Lavorato echoed those sentiments.

"There's a lot of schools in CCS and it's good football, so I think it means quite a bit for our league to have done so well," he said.

Sequoia coach Robert Poulos said he senses that expectations are growing on PAL campuses.

Poulos, who spent more than half a decade in the East Bay at three different schools in the Diablo Valley Athletic League, said he sees parallels with the PAL and perennially dominant North Coast Section leagues that typically would fill the brackets of late playoff rounds.

"I don't think we're quite there yet, but we're getting there," Poulos said.

Poulos said that for the PAL to realize its potential, more schools need to field development freshman teams to go along with the junior varsity and varsity programs. He sees that as an inevitable consequence of winning.

"Success breeds popularity, and popularity breeds numbers," he said.