True Partnership

I started working for the CIF Southern Section as an Assistant Commissioner in September, 2000. What I learned on my first day in our office, and continue to believe today, is that we are committed to a true partnership between our office and our member schools. What I mean by that is we rely on our principals, athletic directors and coaches to make our rules, and together, we all enforce them. Our primary goal as an organization is to provide opportunities for young men and young women to enjoy the benefits of high school athletic programs, while giving our student-athletes and our schools as much support as possible by educating our constituents, assisting them in understanding the interpretations of our rules and serving as a resource for all of our stakeholders. I believe our member schools share that same primary goal.

Once our championship playoffs begin each season, our true partnership grows even stronger. We take the entries from our leagues, prepare the playoff brackets, get the officials assigned and then depend on our member schools to conduct and supervise playoff contests on their campuses or other suitable locations. When it is time for our Championship Finals, we secure the venues and manage those events, doing everything we can to create a memorable championship experience for all involved. In regard to the financial arrangements for our championships, we must work cooperatively with our schools in trying to encourage attendance, while keeping expenses down, so that we maximize the amount of revenue that we share with them.

The 2014-15 school year has been a tremendously successful one for our true partnership. In terms of revenue sharing, our schools have realized over $1.2 million dollars in profits returned to them from our championship playoffs. Also, we have distributed over $127,000 to our schools from our television and Internet broadcast agreements with Fox Sports West, the NFHS Network and various local cable outlets, for their appearances on linear television, the Fox Sports West web platform Prep Zone and the other television and Internet entities mentioned above. These are record numbers, in terms of playoff and television/web revenues distributed to our schools, further proving that when we all work together in this cooperative way, we all benefit.

That is why I am proud to announce that through this true partnership between our organization and our member schools, we have realized a significant surplus in net revenue from our 2014-2015 budget projections. This surplus is due to increased attendance at our championship playoffs, excellent oversight and control of expenses from our member schools and our staff and the continued support of our corporate sponsors who help us all keep costs down. Through the leadership of our CIF Southern Section Executive Committee, and pending approval at their next scheduled meeting on August 13, we are planning to rebate the entire amount of membership dues that we have collected for the 2014-2015 school year to each one of our 576 member schools. This will result in an additional $480,000 in revenues returned to our schools and is our way of expressing how much we appreciate all of their efforts in service to young people. I hope it is clearly evident to everyone that our true partnership works and I look forward to continuing to build upon it in the time ahead.

Thank you very much for your help and support and I wish you a restful summer vacation.

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Commissioner’s Messages