It’s the Newport Invite. Newport Invites the teams it likes to invite, to have teams from different areas. It’s not the “Best Teams In The West Shootout”
There also is the SoCal Championships this same weekend, where some teams like OLU usually enter
looks like Newport is playing Olu today as well….
Super important game for both teams. Should be a dandy
OLu has not played in the Newport Invite for the last several years for whatever reason. Not saying this is the case for OLu, but I recall in previous years that some of the top teams in competitive leagues (like the Sunset league of old) would avoid this tournament to preserve their record going into CIF.
Olu played in the event last year. That being said they didn’t play in the 2 years prior. They were in the first ever version of this tournament in 2022.
Foothill has been in this event since its inception. Jserra has never been in this event or really any of the major tournaments other than the Irvine Socal Championships. This was their first year in the SB TOC.
Cathedral took the place of a team like Carlsbad who had been in the tournament in prior years. As said previously, it’s an invite not based on rankings or sections.
The big ‘end of season’ tournament where all the top teams joined, used to be the SoCal Irvine Championships. Then Covid hit, and it got put on hold. When the covid restrictions started getting lifted, the Irvine Socal Championships were not going to happen, for one reason or another, in 2022, so Newport created the smaller Newport Invite, for 8 teams only, and all games held at Newport.
The championships came back for 2023, but by then no reason to give up a good fundraising tournament for Newport, and I assume past teams get the first option if they want to come back.
The Irvine tournament happened in 2022, Los Alamitos won the event. The Newport tournament was created to be a parallel event to the Elite 8 on the boys side.
Anybody has the link to the Irvine SoCal championships. Starts today?
Awesome thank you.
OLU should win this tournament, which should keep it #4 in Open rankings, unless San Marcos surprises in the Newport Invite and beats some higher seeded team, and then jumps to #4, and thus making OLU #5, and have to drive to SB for CIF.
Tournament is great chance for JSERRA, CDM and Dos Pueblos, to do good and get into Open.
Day 1 Scores - Newport Invite:
San Marcos 9 - Long Beach Wilson 8
Mater Dei 20 - Cathedral Catholic 6
Oaks Christian 13 - Foothill 4
Newport 11 - Bishops 8
Did anyone see the San Marcos/Long Beach Wilson game? I heard the score was 9-4 after 3 quarters