Orange County high school sports will look very different in a couple of years.
County high school administrators gathered last week to vote on releaguing proposals that will go into place for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years.
Football won’t change much. The other sports will.
Four of the proposals dealt with football leagues. The voting result for football was that football leagues will continue to be created as they have the past two school years: the Trinity League remains the same six-team group, and other county football teams will continue to be grouped according to their computerized power ratings. How that is sorted out, including whether the top league remains a four-team league and more, comes later.
The non-football proposal that passed will bring big changes.
A look at what’s coming …
The Trinity Conference
The Trinity League, now a six-team league in boys sports and a four-team league in girls sports (because St. John Bosco and Servite are all-boys schools), becomes an 11-team Trinity Conference for basketball, soccer, volleyball, baseball, softball and more. The holdovers of JSerra, Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran, St. John Bosco, Santa Margarita and Servite will be augmented by Crean Lutheran, Pacifica Christian, Rosary (returning after two years in the Pacific Coast League), Sage Hill and St. Margaret’s.
Trinity Conference teams will be separated into two leagues with league membership varying by sport.
It will be very interesting to see how those Trinity teams are divided into the conference’s upper and lower leagues, especially in boys basketball. It could be that the top league will have Crean Lutheran, JSerra, Mater Dei, St. John Bosco and Santa Margarita. Servite, which has struggled in boys basketball in the Trinity League, might be moved to league’s new lower league.
Crean Lutheran is athletically ambitious, but feels it is not quite ready for Trinity League competition. Crean Lutheran principal Daniel Moyer said Crean might appeal its league placement if the school determines that CIF Southern Section Constitution criteria on releaguing and Brown Act requirements were not followed.
The Coast View Conference
The 10-school group of south county public schools gets larger with the additions of Irvine schools Irvine, Northwood, Portola, University and Woodbridge from the Pacific Coast League.
The Coast View Conference gets stronger in a few sports, like tennis and track and field.
The Laguna Beach problem
Laguna Beach always is a difficult piece of the releaguing puzzle.
Laguna Beach High is geographically remote. For much of Orange County there is no quick and easy way into the unique and wonderful city of Laguna Beach, and no quick and easy way out. Laguna Beach is outstanding in some sports and so-so in others, compounding the difficulty of placing the school correctly into a league.
Releaguing moves Laguna Beach from the Pacific Coast League, which will be no more, to the Century Conference that will be made up of central county and north county schools.
Laguna Beach in recent years has been in the Sunset League.
The worst possible solution to the Laguna Beach Problem is the one that was created at the releaguing meeting, which was to put the school in the Century Conference.
It’s 30 miles from Century Conference school Yorba Linda to Laguna Beach.
Those 30 miles are irrelevant, because nobody here talks distances. We all talk time. When somebody asks, “How far is it to …” we don’t answer “10 miles” we answer “25, maybe 35 minutes … depending on traffic.”
Student-athletes on Century Conference teams in La Habra, Orange, Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda will miss some class time to get to an afternoon game or match at Laguna Beach High. But that’s a once-a-season thing for them. Laguna Beach student-athletes are going to miss a great deal of class time because of all of those away games in La Habra, Orange, Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda.
When voting on releauging proposals concluded and a caucusing session followed, Laguna Beach athletic director Denise Selbe tried to find a school from the Coast View Conference willing to trade places. No school was interested in doing that.
So Laguna Beach is stuck.
It’s always good that school administrators fight for their students and student-athletes. Doing so to the detriment, the great detriment, of another school’s student-athletes is wrong.
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