In the pre competitive equity days is was much easier to schedule when u knew what division you'd be in, in Norcals. It's a crapshoot now and of course as we all have now seen (unfortunately) ...often it's advantageous to lose certain games along the way before NorCals.Scheduling has always been the most underrated aspect of high school coaching, but now with competitive equity, it is mandatory for coaches with any postseason ambitions to consider every non-league game an opportunity to both improve their teams and create the most advantageous postseason scenario.
Of course, there's a lot of luck involved, and it's more art than science, but scheduling is incredibly important for any high school coach.
I wouldn't call it "gaming" the system. Rather setting up a schedule that was advantageous to you come seeding time.Much easier. You always made sure to schedule three or four bad teams.from your division to make your record look good. And I always wanted to find a bad team in a higher division we could beat.
It was a lot easier to game the system.