Camarillo Holds Little Hope for Switch to Frontier League

Camarillo High, which agreed last spring to drop in classification and move to the 2-A Frontier League, apparently will remain in the 4-A Marmonte League.

The Southern Section’s governing body will vote Thursday on two releaguing recommendations that affect four leagues of the section’s northern area, which stretches from Simi Valley to San Luis Obispo.

The first recommendation calls for Camarillo to move to the Frontier League and Santa Ynez to switch from the Tri-Valley to the Los Padres beginning with the 1988-89 school year. Marmonte League officials support that plan, which would leave the four leagues with six teams each.

The second recommendation, an alternative formulated two months after the first, has Santa Ynez moving to the Frontier, making the Frontier and Tri-Valley six-team leagues. Camarillo would remain in the seven-team Marmonte League, and the five-team Los Padres League also would be unchanged.

Marmonte officials have all but conceded the outcome of Thursday’s vote.

“We don’t hold much hope for our plan and I’m really disappointed,” Camarillo Principal Donald Bathgate said. “The effort of the entire Marmonte League was to get to an even-numbered league because it is very difficult to schedule games.”

Santa Clara Principal Dick Towner, the chairman of the area’s releaguing committee, sympathizes with the Marmonte viewpoint but says it is doomed to failure. Teams in odd-numbered leagues face scheduling problems, but area officials believe it is easier for Marmonte League schools to find opponents, he said.

“It’s not a cut-and-dried issue and I understand the need to get away from odd-number cycles,” he said. “But because of their proximity to schools in the Valley, it’s easier for the Marmonte schools to schedule games.

“With teams from the Northern and Los Padres leagues, you’re talking isolation.”