PREPNET / SPEAK OUT

The Southern Section eliminated ties in football championship games beginning this past season. Should it do the same for soccer title matches?

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NICK HOLT

Woodbridge, Soccer

We need a winner. It’s sort of sad when people have to share it. You don’t get the whole glory. They should play overtime and then go to penalty kicks. It would probably make the game more intense and change people’s perspective.

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KENDAL BILLINGSLY

Mission Viejo, Soccer

Competitive athletes don’t want to play to a tie, they want to fight it out to the end. After our [tie in the Division II championship game], people were like, ‘What’s next?”’ They should sort out the fields so we have enough time for overtime.

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SUSIE DAHER

Mission Viejo, Girls’ Soccer Coach

Absolutely. It’s unfair to not at least give soccer teams the opportunity to find out who can last the longest, so to speak. When you get to a championship, there is a sense of “survival of the fittest.” Soccer teams should be able to play at least two 10-minute overtime periods. It doesn’t need to go to a shootout, but to end it at the end of regulation and not give these teams an opportunity to battle it out is bothersome.

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ROB COULTER

Former high school coach

at Magnolia and Kennedy

Absolutely. To differentiate sports like this is unfair to the kids. All sports should be treated the same. I firmly believe it is not a coincidence that it was a Mater Dei tie [against Long Beach Poly in the 1999 Division I football title game] that led to the new rule. Also, soccer used to play until there was a championship--one of the greatest games ever was the game between Orange and Laguna Hills in 1989, when it went to sudden death. The only reason soccer was changed to co-champions was because games were getting backed up to one another when consecutive games went into overtime.

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KENN GORDON

Former Sunny Hills

Soccer Coach

I have a poster hanging in my room. It says, “In Soccer there are no time outs. There are no helmets. No shoulder pads. No commercial breaks. No warm dugouts. No halftime extravaganzas. So if that’s what you need, play another sport.” I’ve never canceled a soccer match in all my years of coaching girls’ high school soccer. A championship game is to crown a champion, not co-champions.

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