Realignment Goes Back to Drawing Board

Representatives from Orange County high schools have decided to re-evaluate proposals that would realign leagues in the Orange County area in 1994, Bolsa Grande Principal Robert Mesa said Wednesday.

The decision came during a meeting that was supposed to move toward completing the new alignments. Three proposals were heard but were generally rejected. Instead, new proposals were submitted during a brainstorming session.

“We heard a few proposals that every one seemed to like a little better,” Mesa said.

League representatives will submit those suggestions to the other members of their league. The nine-member league realignment committee, which has one representative from each league, will meet Wednesday to draw up two or three new proposals based on recommendations from their leagues.

A final proposal will be voted on by all principals at a Feb. 24 meeting. It will then be sent to the Southern Section executive committee for approval.

“It was a very good exchange today,” said Mater Dei Principal Lyle Porter, a member of the committee. “We got to see some hard data and were able to come up with some spin off the original proposals. We now need to get some more information.”

Porter also said the new proposals will be based more on geography and equity of programs and less on enrollment and strength of football programs.

“Leagues can’t be based strictly on football,” Tustin Athletic Director Al Rosmino said. “You have to look at equity.”

A study of each league will be done to determine the strength of each program over the last two seasons.

“We won’t have any preconception or misconception on how strong a league is,” Porter said.

The idea of a “super” league was also rejected at the meeting. In the three proposals submitted, Esperanza, Mater Dei, Santa Ana, Servite and Tustin were grouped together. However, the mood at the meeting was that Mater Dei and Servite should be in different leagues, according to Porter.

“The feeling was that it would be too difficult to compete in such a league,” Porter said.