Orange County releaguing is starting over.
Which might be a massive waste of time.
County schools approved a two-piece releaguing plan in the spring that would be used for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years. Five Freeway League schools – Fullerton, La Habra, Sonora, Sunny Hills and Troy – appealed the plan’s approval to the CIF Southern Section’s Executive Committee. (Buena Park did not file an appeal, but did send to CIF-SS leadership a letter voicing its support of the other five schools’ appeal.) The Executive Committee, which is the CIF-SS administrative body, supported the appeal, thus remanding the issue back to Orange County schools to restart the process.
The releaguing plan’s two pieces that were approved by county schools included the creation of football-only leagues. That is, schools would be grouped into leagues specifically for football.
The other piece affected non-football sports and included the creation of three 15-school conferences and a 10-school conference. Leagues would be formed within those conferences, with league membership varying by sport.
That model exists this school year. In the Century Conference, for example, El Dorado is in the conference’s Crestview League for boys water polo but is in the conference’s North Hills League for football.
Each of the appeals by the Freeway Five included five points that they say prove that releaguing procedures, as mandated by the CIF-SS constitution and its by-laws, were not followed. The Freeway group appeal claimed that the three criteria for league placement – competitive equity, geographic proximity and school enrollments – were not properly evaluated when the conferences and leagues were created.
The restart of the process begins soon and must conclude by the December holiday break so that any appeals would have ample time to be heard by the CIF-SS Executive or the CIF-SS Council before the conclusion of this school year. Which means the potential for a third…
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