Releaguing Plan Would Unite Saugus, Hart, Canyon : High schools: Neighborhood rivals will join revamped Foothill League if proposal is ratified by Southern Section.

Hart, Canyon and Saugus highs, located within 10 miles of one another in the Santa Clarita Valley, will be members of a revamped Foothill League starting in the fall of 1992 if a proposal passed at the Foothill Area releaguing committee’s meeting Thursday goes into effect this fall.

The proposal, adopted by a 24-to-21 vote, seeks to move Canyon and Saugus from the Golden League and put them with Hart, Burbank and Burroughs in a five-school Foothill League. At the same time, the plan would send San Gabriel, Alhambra and Schurr from the Foothill League to a new six-team league. The league, tentatively called the Almont League, also would include Montebello, Bell Gardens and Keppel.

Schools that disagree with the proposal must appeal to the Southern Section releaguing committee by June 3. New league formats will be ratified at a Southern Section Council meeting on Sept. 19.

“This is not what we had hoped for,” Hart Principal Laurence Strauss said. “We wanted to be in the same league as Canyon and Saugus, but we did not want to be in an odd-team league, because it creates all kinds of scheduling problems.”

Canyon Principal Bill White concurred with Strauss.

“We opposed any five-team configuration, but I like the league besides that,” White said.

It could have been worse. Of the 13 formats proposed at the meeting, the most popular alternative to the plan that passed had Hart, Canyon and Saugus in a five-team Pacific League with Pasadena and Muir.

“There was no way I wanted to be in a league with Pasadena and Muir,” White said. “It’d be great to watch, but I didn’t think it was fair to have that many good teams in one league beating the hell out of each other week in and week out.”

The releaguing meeting involved officials from 45 of the 46 high schools situated in the so-called Foothill Area, which comprises the Golden, Foothill, Pacific, Mission Valley, Rio Hondo, Suburban and Whitmont leagues. But the proposal that passed affects just two of the three Valley-area leagues.

The Golden League currently consists of Canyon, Saugus, Antelope Valley, Palmdale, Quartz Hill and Ridgecrest Burroughs. With the departure of Canyon and Saugus, it would pick up Highland (located in Quartz Hill) and Littlerock, schools that opened last fall and will begin fielding varsity teams in the 1992-93 school year.

The Pacific League would remain unchanged.

Although Strauss preferred that Hart join a league with neighborhood rivals Canyon and Saugus, he entered Thursday’s meetings looking to uphold the current Foothill League format because it was more desirable than most of the other proposals.

“Ideally, we wanted to be in an even-numbered league with Canyon and Saugus,” Strauss said. “But knowing the other proposals, and knowing the way some of the other schools would probably vote, I figured that wasn’t going to happen.”