by rerun Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:14 pm
I can answer some of your questions. To my knowledge, there was an earlier posting that stated that Rob G. was going to attend Prep School in Florida at some school called West Lake. LOSSA will more than likely get two Ofsaa the next two years. Next year they will get two berths as longs as no northern ontario schools declare QUAD AAAA. LOSSA had two berths last year since no northern schools declared for QUAD AAAA so the berth automatically goes to the provincial champion's region. Pickering won last year so LOSSA got an extra berth. Pine Ridge got the OFSAA berth by beating Leo Austin in a play-in game. If no teams from the North declares this year...up to this point it has never happened to date....then LOSSA can qualify two teams to OFSAA once again.
Now, the reason that LOSSA doesn't divide everything into EAST and WEST is that the western teams in the Pickering and Ajax area are stronger than the EAST teams. In years past, the fourth place team from the West consistently beat the Number #1 team from the EAST. During the playoffs, the 4 seeds from the West would always beat the 4 seeds from the east. After a couple of years, they decided to mix up all the East and West Teams in league play so it would raise the level of play across the entire region. Traditionally, all the west teams would only play each other....Pickering, Pine Ridge, St. Marys, J Clarke and Notre Dame and so on. Then, all the east teams would play each other....Sinclair, Leo Austin, Paul Dwyer, Courtice, Port Perry and Bowmanville. About three years ago, they changed the EAST & West Format. Now the league groupings are based upon how you did in the playoffs the year before. Next year, the four semi finalists will be in different divisions...Pickering, Leo Austin, Pine Ridge and St Marys....then each of the quarter finalists will be a placed in one of the four divisions with one of the semi final teams and so on.