Separate playoff plan is weighed

Declaring that inequity issues between public and private school athletic programs have become too wide, the Orange County-based Century League has submitted a proposal to require separate playoff divisions for private and public schools for all team sports in the Southern Section.

“It’s going to be very controversial and generate a lot of talk, but I think it’s long overdue,” said Carl Sweet, athletic director at Placentia El Dorado High, which is a member of the Century League.

The proposal, expected to be one of the most hotly debated in the 95-year history of the section, is scheduled for a first reading at the next council meeting of school representatives March 6, and could be voted on at the April meeting for implementation this fall.

Jim Staunton, the section’s commissioner, said Tuesday he has sent the proposal to state legal counsel to be examined because of concerns it might violate bylaws of the California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing body for high school sports. While there are other states that have separated public and private schools in playoff competition, there are no sections in California that have done it.

Whatever the lawyers say won’t change the growing animosity between private and public schools over which side has a competitive advantage.

“There’s an ever-increasing disparity in funding,” Sweet said.

Public schools have seen top coaches hired away by private schools offering big raises. Major building projects at private schools have resulted in college-type athletic facilities at Santa Ana Mater Dei, Westlake Village Oaks Christian and San Juan Capistrano JSerra. And for decades, public and private schools have squabbled over the fact that private schools have no attendance boundaries, allowing them to draw student-athletes from anywhere.

Staunton has been put in the middle of the debate, insisting the section was founded under the principles of being a “public-private organization.”

“I wonder if there aren’t other ways to temper the resentment out there,” he said.

But Sweet echoed the sentiments of many public school coaches by saying: “There’s not a level playing field.”

Because there are 350 public schools that make up the Southern Section, compared with 218 private schools, the proposal could easily pass if public schools united.

But creating separate playoff divisions would also weaken competition, and there’s no certainty that a public school football powerhouse such as Long Beach Poly would want to lose the opportunity to play Encino Crespi, Orange Lutheran, Mater Dei or Sherman Oaks Notre Dame in playoff competition.

“I understand because there are no [attendance] boundaries it makes a difference, but I don’t think it’s a good thing for them, or for us, to split up the playoffs,” Notre Dame football Coach Kevin Rooney said.

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eric.sondheimer@latimes.com