Forget Oaks Christian, Calabasas football is the real issue here

The cries of "four more years" haven't sounded this vile in a while.

Apparently, though, the Marmonte League would like to keep the status quo until at least 2014, when the next Northern Area re-leaguing process is set to take shape.

For football, this hard-line stance is especially troubling.

The competitiveequality issue at hand involves Calabasas.

Calabasas is 2-47 all-time in the Marmonte and, since joining the league in 2002, has never won a Marmonte home game.

Go ahead and reread that last sentence; really let it soak in.

In 2008, a season in which CHS showed improvement by winning a non-league game for the second consecutive year, the Coyotes were outscored 277-58 in Marmonte play, including three shutouts in seven contests.

"We haven't really done well so far, but our kids aren't ready to throw in the towel and say we can't compete," Calabasas athletic director Larry Edwards said Tuesday.

Don't blame the players for this lopsided situation—there were 19 varsity members on the '08 Coyote squad, about a third of the roster size of several league opponents.

Don't blame the coaches, either, guys who put in the same long hours without enjoying the level of youthleague feedersystem success many of their Marmonte opponents possess. (It should be noted that the Calabasas Raiders have played winning ball in recent years).

The fault lies with those who put the Coyotes in this position— administrators representing the CIF-Southern Section Northern Area schools, which includes Marmonte League officials, and, in fact, Calabasas itself.

During last week's Northern Area re-leaguing meeting for the 2010-2014 seasons at Santa Barbara—a session supposedly aimed at solving the lingering problem of what to do with the powerhouse Oaks Christian and St. Bonaventure football programs—31 of 54 administrators inexplicably voted to pass proposal 4A, a plan that lumps OCHS and St. Bonaventure with Grace Brethren and Santa Clara of Oxnard for football only.

The outcome was a joke and spat directly in the face of competitive equality.

It may have been the most ridiculous thing trotted out in Santa Barbara since that giraffe roamed the zoo with a crooked neck, God rest its soul.

To be fair, the final vote was whittled down to a pair of lame proposals—4A and 14. From what it sounds like, the other 12 proposals, including an Oaks Christian-Calabasas football swap, were tossed aside without substantial debate.

According to Oaks Christian athletic director Jan Hethcock, proposal 14 included Oaks Christian moving to the Marmonte League for all sports and St. Bonaventure going to the Marmonte for football only. Calabasas would've gone to the Tri-Valley League for all sports.

That's overkill.

Edwards, like Royal athletic director Jim Wilber in a Simi Valley Acorn story last week, defended the Marmonte's unanimous decision to vote in favor of proposal 4A.

The Marmonte vote was in line with the other public school leagues in the Northern Area.

"In the Marmonte League, everyone works well together," Edwards said. "It's one of those things where if it's not broken, you don't have to fix it."

But that's the rub.

In football, the Marmonte is off-kilter, and it's because of Calabasas.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Calabasas football belongs in the Tri-Valley League. For now, Oaks Christian should move to the Marmonte under the provision that when the playoffs arrive, OCHS and St. Bonaventure are shipped to the PAC-5 League to face the big boys of private/public school football.

If it gets ugly, they can reevaluate the situation in four years.

The CIFSS needs to get involved here and make some guarantees that OCHS and St. Bonaventure will be hitting the road come postseason time. It would help alleviate some ill-will.

In case you haven't noticed, local folks are ticked off. The environment is unhealthy, which totally contradicts what high school sports are supposed to represent.

If they were wise, Marmonte schools would welcome Oaks Christian for a few years.

Think about regular-season showdowns between Westlake and Oaks Christian. Or Oaks Christian vs. Thousand Oaks. Would you pay to watch OCHS against Moorpark?

Gate receipts would be huge. We could buy more textbooks.

And parents, imagine all the scouts that would see your sons play, college recruiters that may have never been in attendance before. Get ready to see your kids on TV a little more, too.

Oaks Christian would win a bunch of Marmonte titles, no doubt. And Calabasas would have to come up with extra money for increased travel costs in the TVL. Those are a few drawbacks.

But the biggest upside would be finally allowing the Calabasas players to compete for wins week in and week out. Heck, they could even challenge for a Tri-Valley title. Wouldn't that be something?

After nearly a decade of failed marriage, it's time for Calabasas and the Marmonte to end this relationship and cut the Coyote football team loose.

Stephen Dorman is The Acorn's sports editor.