Corsairs and Oilers to Play in Different Leagues

Starting with the 1986-87 season, Santa Monica College and West Los Angeles College will compete in different conferences in all sports under the latest re-leaguing by a committee of the California Community College Commission on Athletics.

Santa Monica will compete in a restructured Western State Conference with Canyons, Cuesta, Moorpark, Pierce, Oxnard, Santa Barbara and Ventura.

West Los Angeles will play in a new league that has yet to be named. Other schools in the league are Antelope Valley, Barstow, Cerro Coso, Chaffey, Desert, East Los Angeles, Glendale, Los Angeles City and Harbor.

Others are Mission, Southwest, Trade Tech, Valley, Mount San Jacinto, Rio Hondo, San Bernardino and Victor Valley. Imperial Valley will join the conference for football only.

Jim Raack, WLAC athletic director, said that the re-leaguing “got a little bit out of control. But I don’t think it’ll be a bad situation if everybody gets to work on the scheduling process.”

Balanced Competition

Raack added, “If there is an advantage to the new conference it’s that the schools have a similar level of competition.”

Santa Monica will remain in the Metropolitan Conference for the 1985-86 school year in all sports except football. The Corsair football team will play in the Western State Conference, as it did last year. West Los Angeles will remain in the Mountain Valley Conference for 1985-86.

Jim D’Angelo, Santa Monica assistant dean of athletics, criticized the realigned Western State Conference because Cuesta, located near Morro Bay, is more than 100 miles from Santa Monica.

“With the exception of Cuesta it’s an excellent conference,” he said. “But no one can afford to travel that far for games. In some cases it might mean finding overnight housing for athletes. We can’t afford that.

“We don’t like the idea of our athletes missing classes to travel to games. We don’t feel it’s educationally sound.”

The re-leaguing committee, however, granted Cuesta’s request to be admitted, ruling that there was no reason for the school to be excluded.

Raack said WLAC would have similar travel problems with Barstow, Cerro Coso in Ridgecrest, Desert near Palm Springs and Victor Valley. “Athletes will be missing classes, but not every day, maybe one class a week. We’ll try to schedule Saturday games (in sports other than football) with colleges that are far away.” Community college football games are generally played on Saturdays.