Last weekend’s CIF Finals ended a great season for Twentynine Palms High School track and field. ROP Broadcast student, and track standout, Marcus Chestnut spoke to his coach about CIF…
I sat down with the head coach of Twentynine Palms High School’s track and field team, Ronda Morton, who gave me an insight about CIF. CIF is the governing playoff system for sports which stands for, California Interscholastic Federation. CIF itself only has two stages: prelims and finals. Now with the advancement of these, there comes a three-part stage of state meets. These consist of masters, prelims, and finals. During this season, coach Morton had planned for 12 of the runners/fielders to compete at CIF prelims. In the last five years, Twentynine Palms’ track and field team has taken athletes to CIF finals every year, but only having two all-CIF individuals. The last CIF champion this track team had was in 2004. Coach Ronda believes that the average athlete has a 5 to 7 percent chance of making it to CIF prelims because it’s usually one out of twenty athletes.
