The strength of Wake County's high school soccer is apparent with a glance at the N.C. High School Athletic Association 4-A playoff bracket.

Each of the eastern quarterfinal games will include a team from the Cap Seven or Tri Eight.

Six of the eight eastern quarterfinalists are from one of the two leagues. The other quarterfinalists are Wilmington Hoggard (18-1-1), which plays at Apex (18-0-2), and Wilmington Laney (15-5-2), which is home against Sanderson (16-6-4).

Leesville Road (16-5-3 with all its losses coming against other quarterfinalists) is at Green Hope (18-2-2).

Broughton won the 2006 state title and beat Panther Creek 5-0 Tuesday night.

Panther Creek made its first soccer playoff appearance this year and is one of the biggest surprises in the postseason.

The Catamounts had lost six of their previous nine games before beating Clayton 4-1 in the first round. A bigger surprise was their 1-0 second-round win over Chapel Hill, which finished 17-4-3.

Wake County also had three teams in the N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association finals.

St. David's won the NCISAA 2-A title and North Raleigh Christian lost in 3-A and Raleigh Trinity lost in 1-A.

CARRBORO WINS: Carrboro won its first football game Friday night, defeating Carlisle School 28-7.

Carrboro opened without any seniors this fall and played a varsity schedule. Most new schools play a junior varsity schedule the first year.

Carrboro also had to play all of its Mid-State 2-A conference games in the first weeks of the season.

David Brooks ran for 177 yards in the win over Carlisle.

THEY ARE WRONG: There are some blogs this week that accuse the NCHSAA of setting up the football playoffs to enhance gate receipts.

That's not true.

The NCHSAA has one of the most complex seeding processes imaginable, but if you follow the procedure outlined in the handbook, your bracket would be similar to the one being used.

There would be differences because of drawings to break ties.

One of the interesting things about the pairings is that if the NCHSAA were to do them 10 times, there probably would be 10 different set of pairings.

Luck is still a factor.

For example, Wake Forest-Rolesville, which was in a drawing for the top 4-AA seed in the east with Garner and Hope Mills South View, could have been paired against either Clayton or Durham Jordan instead of Cary in the first round.

Ties throughout the bracket were broken by drawings.

And if you think the drawings might have been rigged, forget it.

A representative of the football coaches association is present.

PLAYOFF CHANGES: Leesville Road and Southeast Raleigh will kick off at 7 p.m. Friday in their 4-AA first-round football playoff game at Leesville.

Princeton will play at North Duplin at 7 p.m. Thursday in a 1-A playoff-opener.

CROSS COUNTRY OVERSIGHT: Four of the five girls who scored for Chapel Hill during its state 4-A championship race on Saturday were mentioned in our story.

The fifth was Molly Spencer, who was the third Tiger to finish and placed 24th overall.

WORD OF GOD IN GLAXO: Raleigh Word of God has been added to the boys field for the GlaxoSmithKline Holiday Invitational basketball tournament in December.

Word of God is replacing North Hollywood (Calif.) Campbell Hall.

Word of God has N.C. State commitment C.J. Leslie and national recruiting target Jon Wall.

WINTER SPORTS: NCHSAA winter sports practice officially began last week and teams begin competition next week.

The News & Observer will preview the top players and teams this Sunday.