Summer homework assignment for high school basketball coaches.

If you want to figure out possible playoff opponents for the 2008-09 season, you need to be calculating numbers.

Step 1: Find schools that have similar enrollments. (Note: Checking past postseason enrollment divisions for cross country gives you a head start).

Step 2: Factor how well your team has fared in recent playoffs. Add the number of playoff wins during the previous playoff cycle, awarding one point for each win, excluding wild-card wins and byes. (Note: Your program could be moved up or down a division based on past performances).

Step 3: Scratch your head over the ramifications of a new factor to the equation: The CIF is adding a sixth division.

The two-year experiment with basketball divisions based on competitive equity was dumped last spring.

It was replaced by a modification of the enrollment-based division, allowing successful teams to move into tougher divisions and struggling programs to drop one division.

Coaches will have to wait to find out their divisional breakdowns.

The CIF will wait until late August or early September, when updated school enrollments are completed, to announce divisional breakdowns, said CIF media relations director Thom Simmons.

Like the last two years, a committee will pick Southern Section representatives for the state tournament based on postseason performances.

Football groupings: There will be no changes in the makeup of the Northern Division football picture for the next two years.

The Foothill League, which has placed two teams in the Northern semifinals the last two years, remains married with the Marmonte, Channel, Pacific View and Pac-7 leagues.

The Tri-Valley League remains in the Northwest Division, which gained the Camino Real League and lost the Valle Vista League.

The Frontier League (Santa Paula, Grace Brethren, Villanova, Malibu and Fillmore) was moved from the Mid-Valley Division to the East Valley, which includes the Academy, Alpha, Christian, De Anza and High Desert Leagues.

Splitting up: Three years ago, area boys' water polo teams were placed in the same division. It saved travel costs and guaranteed that two teams would reach the finals.

Two years ago, the CIF moved the Channel League out of Division IV.

For the 2008-09 season, area leagues will be placed in three divisions: Channel, Division I; Marmonte and Tri-Valley, Division IV; and Pacific View, Division VI.

There will be a larger split for girls' water polo: Channel League, Division I; Marmonte, Division II; Pacific View, Division IV; and Tri-Valley, Division VI.

Sharing a division: Pacific View and Tri-Valley girls' volleyball teams have been placed in Division II-A.

It is a one-division drop for the Pacific View League and a move up for the TVL.

In a playoff correction that the Frontier League had sought two years ago, it was moved to IV-A for girls' volleyball.

For boys' volleyball, the Channel (from II to I) and Marmonte schools switched divisions, while the Tri-Valley was promoted from IV to III.

No move for TVL: Despite the fact that Oaks Christian continues to produce one of the section's best small schools girls' soccer programs (one outright and four co-championships in the last six years), that wasn't enough to push the Westlake Village school and its fellow TVL schools up from its Division V status.

Not so for TVL boys' soccer schools, which will compete in Division IV next winter.

Marmonte League girls' soccer teams will join the Channel League in Division I.

— Contact Derry Eads at deads@VenturaCountyStar.com.