This is when the releaguing process gets interesting.
County principals meet Wednesday at Mariners Church in Irvine to announce in which leagues or with which schools they want their schools to be aligned when new leagues are created for the 2010-11 school year.(Update: Read highlights from the meeting.)
And leagues might be getting creative.
Leagues might join forces as conferences for the next leaguing cycle. There is discussion that the Century, Empire and Freeway leagues could unite as a north county conference. That way, those three leagues could mix and match their member schools to form different leagues for different sports.
There already are four such conferences or associations in the CIF-Southern Section, including the Western Athletic Conference that includes many of the county’s small schools in the Express and San Joaquin leagues.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
With Andy Brown out with a season-ending knee injury, the depth of the Mater Dei boys basketball team has been tested, and will continue to be when the playoffs begin next week. Reserves Connor Hughes, who played well in a starting role Saturday in the Monarchs’ victory over St. Benedict’s of Newark, N.J., at the Nike Extravaganza, Tommy Stangl, Michael Pierce and Eli Stalzer give Mater Dei plenty of good play off the bench. “All year,” Mater Dei senior David Wear said, “people have been saying we’re only five or six deep, but we know, from playing these guys in practice every day, how good they are.”
•Sonora’s boys basketball team sure misses Marcus Farrand. The 6-foot-9 senior center is out, perhaps for the season, with a knee injury that has been diagnosed as a micro fracture. Last week, the Raiders lost to La Habra in a Freeway League game and to Colony of Ontario at the Nike Extravaganza to make them 22-1 with Farrand and 1-2 without him.
•Sonora basketball standout Chris Bearden is drawing recruiting attention. UC Santa Barbara, University of San Diego and Holy Cross are interested. Harvard is in the mix, too, given Bearden’s top performance in the classroom, too.
•El Modena boys basketball coach Ryan Schmidt was suspended from coaching five Vanguards games, three games before this week and this week’s two games that conclude the regular season. “Ryan has been restricted because of a minor incident at our last home game,” El Modena athletic director Brian Fortenbaugh said. That home game was against Century League rival Villa Park, whose coach, Kevin Reynolds, was accused of recruiting violations. Scmidt, El Dorado coach Ryan Mounce and Tustin coach Ringo Bossenmeyer were the main accusers.
•The best non-Mater Dei boys basketball player in the county might be Tesoro 6-8 senior Chris Manresa. Last week, Manresa had 26 points and 17 rebounds in a Titans’ victory over Aliso Niguel, and 25 points in a victory over Capistrano Valley.
•Servite had the most challenging nonleague schedule of all county football teams this past fall, and it looks like more of the same for the Friars in 2009. They open with a Week 0 game against defending CIF-Southern Section Pac-5 Division champion Long Beach Poly at Veterans Stadium, Clovis West of Fresno and Crespi of Encino in home games, then an away game against Edison, and finish nonleague with an away game at Chaparral of Temecula. Servite football home games likely will be at Cerritos College again this year.
•The Placentia-Yorba Unified School District this week might produce new attendance boundaries because of the opening this fall of Yorba Linda High. Yorba Linda – the Mustangs – has already made quite a splash in coach hirings, with football coach Jeff Bailey moving there from El Dorado, where he won two CIF championships, baseball coach Matt Stine moving from El Dorado where he was an assistant coach most of the time but coached the Golden Hawks to a CIF title in ’01 as a one-year interim coach, and girls basketball coach Marc Hill moving there from Esperanza.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
