The 2024 Trinity League football group might include Los Alamitos and Mission Viejo.
Actually, it would not be called the Trinity League.
Let’s explain …
The process of creating Orange County high school sports leagues for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years is underway. County athletic directors meet Monday to discuss possibilities.
The major move could be the creation of football-only leagues. That is, a school like La Habra that has been in the Freeway League for decades could be placed in a six-team football group that would include no other Freeway League teams but would remain in the Freeway League for all other sports.
The football-only concept would take the Orange County Area’s 75 schools that play 11-man football and rank them according to CalPreps.com’s ratings system. That’s the rating system the CIF Southern Section uses to place football teams in football playoff divisions.
Using CalPreps data, a power-points profile would be created each of the 75 teams. The power-points profile would be based on the team’s performance the previous two seasons, with 65 percent of the profile coming from the most recent season and the other 35 percent from two seasons prior.
The six teams with the most power points would be grouped in one league. The next six teams would be grouped together and so on to create 11 six-team leagues. That covers 66 teams; the other nine, according to Ocean View athletic director Tim Walsh, would be spread into four- and five-team leagues.
League memberships would be different the following school year when power-points profiles are changed by the most recent season’s performance.
Although it’s not in Orange County, St. John Bosco, located in Bellflower, is included in the Orange County Area. According to CIF-SS bylaws, area placement is the first step toward creating leagues. St. John Bosco was placed in the Orange County Area many years ago so it could be with the five Orange County schools that are in the Trinity League, and there is no better place for St. John Bosco to be in the Southern Section when it comes to area placement, so St. John Bosco is in the 75-school group.
After the athletic directors’ meeting Monday the principals for the schools meet May 15 to vote on the proposals that will come from the athletic directors. In the past a series of votes reduced the number of proposals to three proposals. The final proposal must be approved by 60 percent of the principals for passage, and the accepted proposal is presented to the CIF-SS Council in the fall for final approval.
Some principals, perhaps already not jazzed that football is the tail that wags the releaguing dog, might not support the football-only idea. They might not go along with freshmen football players in south county missing class time to travel for an afternoon lower-level football game in north county, even if that is just for a couple of Thursdays each school year.
Back to Los Alamitos and Mission Viejo getting into a football league with Mater Dei and St. John Bosco and others …
Walsh said that when athletic directors made a model of what the football-only leagues concept would look like if it was in place for the upcoming 2023-24 school year, the rankings would exclude JSerra and Servite from the top group of six teams but would include Los Alamitos and Mission Viejo.
Whatever the top league of six teams is called, It would not be called the Trinity League. Maybe it would be League A, or League 1. Or maybe the “What Are We Doing In A League With Those Guys?!?!” League.
Related Articles
Santa Margarita QB Bekkem Kritza, Los Alamitos lineman T.A. Cunningham transferring to other schools
Eighth-grade QB with Pac-12 offer enrolls at Huntington Beach for next school year
JSerra lineman Kainoa Davis transfers to Mater Dei
Saddleback selects Paige Nobles as football coach
Jeff Reitz named football coach at Katella
NOTES
Santa Margarita can clinch the Trinity League baseball championship outright with a win over Mater Dei on Friday. Santa Margarita is 10-1 in league, three games ahead of Mater Dei (7-4). The most recent time Santa Margarita won a baseball league title was in 2004 when the Eagles shared the Serra League championship with Mater Dei. That’s before this season’s players were born. …
Another large baseball game Friday is Fountain Valley at Huntington Beach. Huntington Beach, No. 1 in the Orange County Top 25, is in first place in the Surf League at 4-2, with unranked Fountain Valley and No. 19 Los Alamitos tied for second at 3-3. Fountain Valley beat Huntington Beach on Wednesday and on March 7. …
JSerra senior Brendon See has the state’s leading marks in the shot put at 61 feet, 11.75 inches and in the discus at 197-8 for a combined 259 feet, 7.75 inches. He signed with Oklahoma.
