PREP WEDNESDAY : NOWHERE TO GO : Santa Margarita Looks for a League, Finds Only Rejection

It’s an issue that appears so simple, and yet is so sensitive.

Santa Margarita High School, a sparkling $26-million Catholic school nestled in Rancho Santa Margarita, is looking for a home for its athletic teams.

Simple enough. Trouble is, few have welcomed the two-year-old school with open arms.

Santa Margarita currently plays in the Olympic League, against schools with an average enrollment of about 470. But Santa Margarita will have an enrollment of about 1,200 by the time its first senior class graduates in 1991. That means the school needs to find a league in which it can play with someone its own size. No easy task.

The Southern Section is now realigning its leagues for the 1990-92 seasons, but it hasn’t yet figured out how to handle Santa Margarita.

In the past seven months, Santa Margarita has been rejected by administrators from three groups: the small private schools, the larger Catholic schools and Orange County’s public schools. Santa Margarita would prefer to be grouped with the county’s public schools, which could be of similar size and present no great travel problems.

The Southern Section Executive Committee was expected to rule on Santa Margarita’s fate this week, but the issue is so sensitive that a decision has been delayed at least until next month.

Administrators of the Catholic Athletic Assn. have rejected Santa Margarita for practical reasons. They say travel time and transportation costs would be unbearable if Santa Margarita were placed in a Catholic league, such as the Angelus League. The school’s closest Catholic competitor is Mater Dei, a round trip of about 76 miles.

Rich Schaaf, Santa Margarita’s athletic director, estimates the school would spend $150,000 annually in transportation costs if it were placed in a Catholic league.

“If they were placed in the Angelus League, they would be playing schools in Playa del Rey (St. Bernard) and Mission Hills (Alemany) and that’s not realistic for a high school,” said Father William Brelsford, principal at St. Bernard. “They would have to leave at noon to make it to some of their (3 p.m.) games.”

Principals of the county’s 57 public high schools voted overwhelmingly to reject Santa Margarita’s placement in their area, citing what they call “program incompatibility.” Simply put, Catholic and public schools play by a different set of rules.

“Santa Margarita is accepting a select few,” said Bill Brand, principal at nearby Trabuco Hills. “As an educator at a public school, I’m accepting everyone.

“Santa Margarita has a diocese that stretches from Buena Park to San Clemente. Trabuco Hills’ students come from within a five-mile radius of the campus.”

It’s a long-standing issue, but Catholic and public schools have learned to live together in other states, even in the Southern Section.

The National Federation of State High School Athletic Assns. reports that only three states--Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania--separate Catholic and public high schools.

Southern Section member schools such as Damien, Bishop Diego, Paraclete, St. Joseph and Santa Clara are Catholic schools playing in public leagues. No Catholic school plays in an Orange County public-school league.

Still, Father Michael Harris, Santa Margarita principal who was at Mater Dei from 1975-87, admits, “I do agree that having an unlimited drawing area clearly creates a problem.”

Santa Margarita is existing happily in the Olympic League now and will compete in that league through the 1989-90 season. It originally was accepted by administrators of the private area for the 1990-92 cycle. (The Southern Section realigns its leagues every two years.) But that changed.

“They were very open about everything,” said Jerry De Wit, Ontario Christian’s athletic director. “They said their goal was to be a power in three years. They weren’t trying to hide anything.

“We voted to accept them for one more year, but there was a lot of apprehension at that meeting. It’s going to be the next great athletic power, everyone seems to agree about that. It’s just when it will happen.”

Santa Margarita, which expects eventually to grow to 2,000 students, envisioned its teams playing for two years in the Pacific Coast League beginning in 1990.

“I thought maybe we would fit with Trabuco Hills and Woodbridge, so we were thinking the Pacific Coast League,” said Schaaf, who also is the boys’ varsity basketball coach.

“Now, I’m thinking that if we are placed in the county area, maybe we should be placed in a league in the north part of the county. That way, we won’t be drawing most of our kids from public schools that we would be playing against in a league around here.

“That way, people won’t be so bitter. I’ve come to realize that if we go into a public league, that whenever we go to a coaches’, athletic directors’ or principals’ meeting, there will be some bitterness.

“If a league is told that it has to accept us, it’s going to create some hard feelings. Nobody likes being told what to do.”

Some who oppose the grouping of Santa Margarita with the county’s public schools are prematurely judging the school, says Dennis Evans, Newport Harbor’s principal.

While he was principal at Corona del Mar last year, Evans filed an undue influence charge against Mater Dei after quarterback Danny O’Neil transferred from Corona del Mar to the Catholic school. However, Evans was surprisingly sympathetic toward Santa Margarita.

“Santa Margarita seems to be the unfortunate heir to a legacy of past parochial problems,” Evans said. “It’s a brand-new school that’s just getting on its feet. History tells us that it takes time to establish a dominating sports program.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how the county principals deal with this issue. I sense a preconceived bias against parochial schools, and that bias is justified to a degree. There is a real concern that this school is going to dominate in athletics.”

While the issue is complex, the criteria for placing a high school into a league (private, Catholic or public) are rather simple. Three variables--enrollment, geographic location and strength of program--are considered.

But the criteria for the placement of Santa Margarita were somehow overlooked by the Southern Section’s Executive Committee when it voted to recommend that the school be placed in the parochial geographic area four months ago.

Rudy Trujillo, principal at St. Genevieve in Panorama City and president of the Catholic Athletic Assn., filed an appeal to the Southern Section Executive Committee against the placement of Santa Margarita in the parochial area.

Trujillo’s appeal was denied, but later sustained when the CAA exercised its final option to appeal the issue with the state CIF. The state CIF ruled that the Southern Section’s Executive Committee failed to utilize its own criteria in placing Santa Margarita in the parochial area.

“Just because Santa Margarita is a parochial school, that doesn’t mean it automatically goes into a parochial area,” said Stan Thomas, Southern Section commissioner. “We failed to follow our own criteria.”

Trujillo said the school’s location was the reason his organization appealed the placement of Santa Margarita in the parochial area.

“They’re clearly located in the Orange County releaguing district,” Trujillo said.

Transportation costs are a key factor. Schaaf said the cost for transporting 35 boys’ and girls’ athletic teams at Santa Margarita was $130,000 this year while playing in the Olympic League, which has schools as far away as Ontario, Whittier and Cerritos.

In addition to the $130,000, the school also bought four vans at a cost of $20,000 apiece to transport teams. The budget probably will increase substantially next year when Santa Margarita’s program expands from 35 to 45 teams.

“It’s for practical reasons that we (public and parochial) are thrown together,” Harris said. “We have to do the best we can.”

The Southern Section’s Executive Committee, seemingly caught in the middle of a sensitive issue that could set precedent in Orange County, has taken a careful approach to resolving the placement problem after making one mistake.

The committee met for three hours Monday, but failed to come to a resolution. Thomas said he plans to gather the county’s league representatives, members of the CAA and representatives from the private area next month in hopes of reaching a solution.

“The problem is finding a middle ground between the public schools in Orange County and the CAA,” Thomas said. “We want to resolve this issue, we don’t want to litigate it.”

SANTA MARGARITA’S ROAD TO NOWHERE September 1988: Santa Margarita is accepted by schools in the private geographical area for the 1990-92 releaguing cycle, which means the school would be placed in a league of private schools with an average enrollment of less that 700.

October 1988: Bill McKinley, chairman of private area, informs Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas that Santa Margarita, which has a projected enrollment of about 1,200 for 1990-91, has been misplaced, and both agree a correction should be made.

January 1989: Southern Section Executive Committee recommends that Santa Margarita be placed in the Orange County geographical area for the 1990-92 cycle, which would group the school with public schools in the county.

January 1989: Orange County public high school principals vote to reject the placement of Santa Margarita in their area because they they say private schools operate under a different set of rules from public schools.

February 1989: Executive Committee recommends Santa Margarita be placed in the parochial geographic releaguing area for the 1990-92 cycle, which would place the school in a Catholic school league, likely the Angelus League.

February 1989: Rudy Trujillo, president of the Catholic Athletic Assn., files an appeal to the Southern Section Executive Committee against the placement of Santa Margarita in the parochial area, primarily because of transportation costs and travel time.

March 1989: Executive Committee sustains the previous decision to place Santa Margarita with parochial schools for the 1990-92 cycle.

April, 1989: Catholic Athletic Assn. exercises its final appeal to the State CIF over the placement of Santa Margarita in the parochial area.

April, 1989: State CIF sustains the Catholic Athletic Assn.’s appeal on grounds the Southern Section Executive Committee failed to follow the criteria for placement of Santa Margarita based on enrollment, geographic location and strength of program. Issue is returned to the Executive Committee.

April, 1989: Executive Committee fails to resolve the issue. Commissioner Stan Thomas plans a meeting of Orange County league representatives, members of the Catholic Athletic Assn. and representatives from the private area on May 10 in an effort to reach a decision.