Reprieve Likely for Foothill : Committee OKs Plan to Keep League Intact

The six-team Foothill League was saved from extinction for at least two years Wednesday when the Foothill-area releaguing committee adopted a proposal that would keep all seven leagues in the area intact through the next releaguing cycle.

The proposal will be submitted to the Southern Section Council meeting Jan. 18 for almost certain approval, according to Schurr High Principal Jim Douglas, who served as the releaguing committee chairman.

The meeting at Schurr on Wednesday of representatives from the area’s 44 schools was forced after Foothill-area schools reached a stalemate at the Southern Section Council meeting Sept. 21, during which eight of nine releaguing proposals were adopted. The releaguing plans will take effect for a two-year period beginning in the 1990-91 school year.

In the Sept. 21 meeting, the Foothill area’s seven leagues voted three to three with one abstention on a plan that would have sent Burbank, Burroughs and Hart of the Foothill League to a realigned Pacific League with current members Crescenta Valley, Glendale, Hoover, Muir and Pasadena.

Voting in favor were the Mission Valley, Rio Hondo and Whitmont leagues. Dissenting were the Golden, Pacific and Suburban leagues. The Foothill League abstained.

Five months earlier, the Foothill area approved that plan by a 26-to-16 vote of member schools. On Wednesday, they defeated the same proposal and approved a status-quo plan, 23 to 19.

Douglas said that the Foothill League would support the new proposal.

“There’s no point at this stage of the game to keep defeating the proposal at the council level. Everybody needs to get on with their scheduling, so we’ll pass the proposal,” he said.

Hart Principal Laurence Strauss, the Foothill League president, submitted the plan for status quo.

“The timing to releague is not the best because of the changes that will be occurring in the Foothill area,” he said. “We’d just have to releague again in two years, anyway.”

Strauss cited the opening of two new high schools in Antelope Valley and Palmdale, and the projected opening of new schools in the Santa Clarita Valley and El Monte as factors in future releaguing considerations.