TRACY, Calif. — For the second time in three years, rain wreaked havoc with the NFCA Nor Cal High School Leadoff Classic, forcing the brackets to be abandoned and making crowning a champion impossible.
After getting just a handful of games in to open the tournament on Thursday, the rest of that day and all of Friday was rained out. The city of Tracy went to extreme measures to try to get teams on the field, bringing in a crew that worked on the fields for a 12-hour stretch starting at 4:30 p.m. Friday, allowing 32 games to be played on Saturday.
Tournament officials threw out the planned schedule of games in favor of matching schools that were able to remain in town an extra day as best they could for two games apiece, based on their MaxPreps state rankings.
“Mother Nature won out in the long run again this year,” longtime tournament organizer and former Pacheco High coach Charlie Pikas acknowledged. “We were able to play the first-round games on Thursday morning before the rain started coming down.”
“We had hopes of playing Friday morning, so I went to the fields around 3:30 a.m. to find out they were not going to be playable. The cancellation of Thursday and Friday meant we could put together some great matchups for Saturday games and they lived up to our expectations. It didn't start how we wanted, but definitely ended on a great note!”
Through no fault of its own, this tournament has had more than its share of trouble getting games played. Before hometown Tracy High won four straight games to capture last season’s Leadoff for the second time in the past six tournaments, the event was besieged by weather in 2022, and was cancelled due to COVID-19 the two years before that.
A 47-team tournament had been planned for this year’s 19th edition of the event at the Tracy Sports Complex, Tracy’s Kimball High School and the beautiful new 10-diamond Legacy Fields in Tracy. There was also supposed to have been a 26-team junior varsity event running concurrently to the varsity tournament.