By Matt Smith
The District 1 football brackets were announced Sunday. It would be easier to list the Delaware County teams that failed to qualify for the playoffs, so here goes: Chester, Ridley and Upper Darby. That’s it. The rest of the county’s District 1 programs — seven Central League, five Del Val League, one Ches-Mont League and one Bicentennial — unofficially qualified for the postseason. According to the District 1 website (piaad1.org), the tournament brackets will not be finalized until noon Monday.
Let’s begin in Class 6A, where most of the point-tabulating drama unfolded over the weekend.
Garnet Valley (9-1) earned the No. 3 seed and hosts Central Bucks West (6-4) Friday. The Jags were the top seed for weeks, but ultimately lost out on tiebreakers to Neshaminy (9-1). Haverford is seeded 11th and travels to 2016 District 1 champion, No. 6 North Penn (8-2). GV and Haverford placed second and third, respectively, in the Central League.
Newly-minted Del Val League champion Penn Wood goes in as the 15th seed. The Patriots, who’ve won eight in a row, will attempt to upset second seeded Perkiomen Valley (82).
By late Friday night, it had appeared Ridley was penciled into the 16th slot. The Green Raiders had won their fifth straight decision to end the regular season with a 6-4 record.
Due to tiebreakers and results from Saturday’s action, Ridley was bumped from the 6A playoffs by Spring-Ford (6-4). Also hurting Ridley’s playoff eligibility was Father Judge, which lost to Roman Catholic Saturday. Ridley defeated Father Judge in Week 1 and could have benefitted from another Judge win.
