The Marmonte League is set for the next four years.

Or is it?

Confusion still reigns after the CIF-Southern Section voted last week at Long Beach to turn the Marmonte into a 10-team league for football only, adding state and national powers Oaks Christian and St. Bonaventure of Ventura into the existing mix of Agoura, Calabasas, Moorpark, Newbury Park, Royal, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Westlake.

Several local athletic directors said the reshaped Marmonte will remain a 10-team league with four playoff spots. Other athletic directors said the Marmonte could morph into two five-team leagues, a la the Tri-County Athletic Association which links the Tri-Valley and Frontier leagues.

“It’s really thrown the Northern Area into a tizzy and affected a lot of people,” said Dick Billingsley, Oak Park’s co-athletic director and former head coach of the varsity football team.

Some schools are happy with the decision, including Oaks Christian and Calabasas, which fought tooth-and-nail to get what they wanted.

“Calabasas and Oaks Christian did a lot of behind-the-scenes politicking, calling a lot of schools,” Billingsley said.

The rest of the Marmonte is still digesting the news.

“There are winners and losers in this process,” said Simi Valley athletic director Matt La Belle. “Our school, we came out bigtime losers on this.”

Calabasas at

center of debate

Larry Edwards has been involved with Calabasas athletics for almost 30 years.

The CHS athletic director and varsity football coach has seen the Coyotes enjoy their share of gridiron success (two section semifinal appearances) and setbacks (current 48-game Marmonte losing streak).

Although the Coyotes have struggled, Edwards said Calabasas can be a force in football again.

“I’m not convinced we can’t get better,” the coach said.

CHS assistant principal Eric Anhalt said that if Calabasas swapped spots in all sports with Tri-Valley League member Oaks Christian, the Coyotes would lose 14 levels of athletics—roughly 200 student-athletes.

“We’d be robbing kids of opportunities,” he said.

School officials claimed that if CHS switched leagues, it would result in lost classroom time. Calabasas also would have had the largest school by population in the Tri-Valley.

The Coyotes, however, haven’t been competitive in most sports since joining the Marmonte in 2002.

Calabasas varsity teams won 23 percent of its league games or matches in 2008-09, going 35-114-1 overall. Ten teams didn’t win a varsity league contest last season.

The Coyotes aren’t improving over time.

Calabasas’ overall winning percentage in Marmonte varsity action has decreased every year for the past five seasons.

Girls’ cross country, girls’ track and football didn’t win league contests during that span, while girls’ and boys’ water polo and boys’ track all won once.

Girls’ soccer won two league matches in the past half-decade, as did boys’ swimming.

Even strong teams like girls’ tennis have struggled this fall. This year’s squad will not win the Marmonte for the first time since 2002 and could miss the playoffs.

Edwards defended Calabasas athletics.

“Every school has their programs that year in and year out are outstanding and very successful and other teams that don’t win as many games,” he said. “Winning and losing goes in cycles.”

Moorpark athletic director Rob Dearborn suggested at Long Beach that Calabasas should enter the TVL to rebuild its entire athletic program before rejoining the Marmonte in 2014-15.

Edwards rejected the idea.

“It’s easier to drop a program than it is to reinstate it,” he said.

“Once you drop out of a league, it makes it harder to get back in. We may not have the option to return. We might be good enough to come back but there’s no room.”

Now Edwards and the Coyotes must add OCHS and St. Bonaventure to an already daunting Marmonte football slate.

Oaks Christian,

Grace Brethren satisfied

Oaks Christian is the arguably the biggest winner in the releaguing saga.

The Lions got exactly what they wanted.

Oaks Christian gets to play in the rugged Marmonte for football only, while its other sports teams can continue to dominate in the Tri-Valley.

“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” said OCHS athletic director Jan Hethcock. “We knew we had to get out of the TCAA. We wanted to get out of there for years. We’re happy to be going to the Marmonte League.”

Hethcock said the revamped Marmonte is the one of the best football leagues in California.

Oaks Christian and St. Bonaventure have split their only two meetings, and both schools are defending section champions. St. Bonaventure will move from the Channel League.

Hethcock sympathized with the other Marmonte schools, many of which will not make the playoffs in the next four years.

“I can understand their sentiments,” he said. “You’ve got two private schools coming into a public-school league. I understand their concerns. . . .

“It’s a phenomenal league. It’s a class organization.

“We’re not there to rock the boat. Whatever the Marmonte votes to do, Oaks Christian will be happy to participate in. . . . There’s more competition, and I think competition is good for everyone,” Hethcock said.

Oaks Christian’s football team is 7-0 and ranked second in the state and 13th nationally by MaxPreps.com. The Lions defeated Skyline, the No. 1 team in Washington state and top-50 nationally, earlier this season.

If OCHS wins another section crown, the Lions will likely play in a state bowl game.

Grace Brethren of Simi Valley, a Frontier League school, was pleased that a four-team privateschool league was shot down 8-1 by Northern Area leagues.

The private-school group would have consisted of GBHS, Oaks Christian, St. Bonaventure and Santa Clara.

“We achieved our primary goal,” Grace Brethren Principal John Hynes said. “We had to get out of the four-team league.”

Picking up the pieces

The rest of the Marmonte League is still reeling.

Facing Oaks Christian and St. Bonaventure isn’t appetizing for rebuilding teams—or even powerhouses—within the Marmonte.

Simi Valley first-year head coach Lance Martin has struggled overhauling the 0-7 Pioneers’ football team. His job got much more difficult with the releaguing, La Belle said.

“Lance is doing a good job getting the kids excited to play football. The kids are learning fundamentals and working hard,” La Belle said.

“He’s starting from ground zero. All of a sudden now, the carrot that’s out there to become the first team in a quarter of a century to make the playoffs from Simi High—that carrot got a lot further away from us with this turn.

“There are four or five schools now that are never going to make the playoffs,” La Belle said.

Dearborn said it will be tough to rebuild struggling programs because there will be only one non-league game for each Marmonte team.

The Moorpark athletic director, who never won more than five games when he was coaching the Musketeer football squad, said it’s important for rebuilding teams to schedule games against similar opponents to gain confidence.

“It’s a battle to turn a program around,” Dearborn said. “One of the ways you do it is to schedule games against teams you can be competitive with and beat.”

Because of releaguing, Marmonte schools are forced to break existing preseason contracts with out-of-league teams.

There will be challenges next season, but after that the scheduling process should be much easier for every school, Dearborn said.

‘Flawed’ voting system

Many athletic leaders were disappointed in the process as much as with the final decision.

The Northern Area leagues voted 7-1, with one abstention, in favor of an all-sports swap between Calabasas and OCHS.

After Calabasas, Oaks Christian and Ventura appealed that decision, the other leagues voted 41-21 in favor of the Channel League’s proposal—the one that exists today.

Dearborn called the section’s appeal process “flawed.”

Thousand Oaks athletic director Jason Klinger was frustrated after the shocking turnaround.

“The council ignored what the Northern Area voted on three minutes before,” he said.

“Worst-case scenario, we were looking at Oaks Christian swapping with Calabasas for football only. Instead of adding one powerhouse, we’re adding two powerhouses into the league.”

La Belle felt hopeless after the releaguing process took its unexpected U-turn.

“I’m disappointed. I’m saddened for our kids,” he said. “I think that an injustice has happened to them. I feel they have been wronged and there’s nothing I can do about it. That doesn’t sit well with me.”