sm811

SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Santa Margarita & Others Lose
Bid On Re-Leaguing--(Aug. 11, 1998)

Santa Margarita, State CIF Basketball Champions this past year in Division II, which for the last year has fought a bitter battle with the CIF Southern Section over a re-leaguing plan which would take it out of regular competition with public schools and place it into a private school league, along with h Mater Dei, Servite and Rosary, has lost an appeal before a State CIF appeals panel.

Practically speaking, this might affect Santa Margarita's playoff opportunities, at least for league play, and they might have a more difficult time qualifying for playoff berths, particularly if they are placed into the same league with Mater Dei, and only one team is permitted to advance in a four team league. But many questions remain about the shape of the league, it's members and the type of schedule the teams will play.

The CIF Southern Section earlier had ordered Mater Dei, Servite, Rosary and Santa Margarita, into private-school leagues beginning with the 1999-2000 school year. Santa Margarita had argued that the Southern Section had not considered the geographical burdens and travel hardships which would be caused by the re-leaguing, one of the primary criteria listed in the Section's releaguing guidelines, when it ordered the schools to reconfigure leagues last April.

The final decision was reached by a five-person appeals panel which heard the matter on August 3 in Sacramento, and which released the results this week. The panel ruled the Southern Section re-leaguing committee had followed its own regulations, had not acted arbitrarily or capriciously, and that it was a reasonable decision.

"I don't know if there are any other options left for us," Santa Margarita principal Merritt Hemenway told the Orange County Register. Hemenway also said there were no plans to carry the appeal to a state or federal court. "We'll have to see what the (Catholic Athletic Association) has for us."

Actually, Santa Margarita was the last holdout appealing the re-leaguing decision. Mater Dei made the decision a while ago to comply. Damien of LaVerne, and St. Lucy's also appealed.

Having four parochial schools in leagues with Orange County public schools had been a source of controversy ever since it was first started by the Southern Section and state CIF in 1991. While this type of leaguing was not common (it doesn't occur in Los Angeles, where the City Section consists of all public schools, and the area Southern Section teams are mostly private), it did lead to claims that the private schools had an advantage in that they could draw players from all over without regard to residence eligibility boundaries that public schools are hampered by. Likewise, the private schools often felt the public schools had an advantage in that they had a larger pool of students to draw upon.

The Southern Section had amended its bylaws this past April, to permit the executive committee to make recommendations for changes in releaguing if special circumstances existed. The committee then recommended that the four parochial schools in Orange County, along with Damien of La Verne and St. Lucy's of Glendora be moved out of their public leagues and into private leagues. The final leaguing decision will apparently be made when the school principals from Orange County's 62 public schools meet on September 1 to formalize the 10 area leagues, which will no longer include the county parochial schools.