Santa Margarita’s Football Team Receives a Reprieve : Preps: Southern Section gives school permission to play free-lance schedule for the next two seasons.

Santa Margarita High School’s football program received permission Thursday from the Southern Section to play a free-lance schedule for the next two seasons rather than compete in the Angelus League.

The section’s general council voted, 27-20, to allow school in Rancho Santa Margarita to break from the six-team league for football only and compete against smaller schools for the 1990-92 cycle.

Santa Margarita, which will graduate its first senior class of 220 students in 1991, had been placed in the Angelus League for the 1990-92 cycle by the Catholic Athletic Assn., which governs Catholic schools in the Southern Section.

Santa Margarita was scheduled to compete against Loyola, Bishop Amat, Mater Dei, Servite and St. John Bosco, all traditional powers among Division I schools. Santa Margarita currently competes against smaller, private schools in the Olympic League, where its football team qualified for the Division IX playoffs last fall.

“We’re small, new and young, whereas the other schools in the league are established, bigger, powerful and more successful,” said Father Michael Harris, Santa Margarita principal.

The decision was the first victory for Santa Margarita in a yearlong struggle to find a home for its athletic teams beginning next season. Santa Margarita had been rejected by the Orange County public schools and the Catholic Athletic Assn.

Earlier, the county’s public schools voted to reject Santa Margarita’s membership in the Orange County Geographic Area because Santa Margarita is allowed to draw students from throughout the county while public schools have limited attendance boundary areas.

CAA members voted to reject Santa Margarita’s membership in the Parochial Area because the school is isolated from other Catholic schools. Mater Dei, the closest member of the Angelus League to Santa Margarita, is 26 miles away. Santa Margarita lost in appeals to the Southern Section’s executive committee and a State CIF committee in an effort to avoid joining other Catholic schools in a league alignment last year.

“We finally got a favorable appeal,” Harris said. “I thought we had a 50-50 chance, but I didn’t come in here with a lot of confidence. I’m hopeful in the next releaguing cycle (1992-94) of eventually going into the county’s public area.”

The decision rekindled some unhappiness among other members of the CAA toward Santa Margarita. Gary McKnight, Mater Dei athletic director, said the decision would create scheduling hassles.

“This causes some unbelievable problems at this point in the school year,” McKnight said. “I understand Santa Margarita’s problems, but we’re suddenly faced with the problem of finding a team to play in the eighth week of the season.”

Tom Vitello, Servite athletic director, said he was quite surprised by Santa Margarita’s victory.

“They came to our league meeting last month and asked to be released from the league,” Vitello said. “We told them, ‘Fine, as long as they found another league to compete in and the five of us found adequate replacements.’

“They got out the back door and put the rest of the league in a bind.” Harris said he understood the problems that Thursday’s decision created for the members of the Angelus League.

“They (other member schools) didn’t want to release us from the league for obvious reasons,” he said. “Why give up a game, especially an easy game?”

Richard Schaff, Santa Margarita’s athletic director, said he didn’t anticipate any problems filling a 10-game schedule outside of the Angelus League.