TRITON REPORT

BY ZACH CAVANAGH, SAN CLEMENTE TIMES

For

@SouthOCSports and on Instagram @South_OC_Sports

Phillips, de Fabrique Swim at State Meet

Senior swimmer Madelyn Phillips closed her San Clemente career with a top-10 state swim and handed off the baton to freshman Zoe de Fabrique at the CIF State Championships on Saturday, May 13, at Clovis West High School.

Phillips, who was the first Triton girl to ever swim at the state championships last season, finished eighth in the 100-yard breaststroke with an All-American time of 1:02.83.

De Fabrique finished eighth in the 500-yard freestyle with an All-American consideration time of 4:55.73.

CIF-SS champion boys swimmer senior Noah Sech did not swim at the state meet.

Track Qualifies 6 Entries to CIF-SS Masters

San Clemente got consistent finishes from its distance runners and high-flying field results at the CIF-SS Division 1 Finals on Saturday, May 13, at Moorpark High School.

Senior Juan Chantaca (3,200 meters) and juniors Taj Clark (800 meters) and Brett Ephraim (1,600 meters) all finished fourth in their events to qualify for the CIF-SS Masters Meet this Saturday, May 20, back at Moorpark.

Senior Griffin Schwab put up the highest finish for San Clemente with a second-place clearance in the high jump at 6 feet, 6 inches. Dexter Brice, a junior, finished fourth in the pole vault.

The Tritons’ 4x400-meter relay team— juniors Jackson Brownell, Taj Clark, Pierce Clark and Lucas Sidhu—also qualified for Masters.

The top six finishers in each event at Masters qualify for the CIF State Championships.

Overhauled Football League Proposal Passed by Principals, Awaits CIF-SS Approval

The high school sports landscape in Orange County, particularly in football, is on track to look dramatically different for the 2024-25 school year.

A proposal that would shake up the entire structure of county affiliations with rankings-based, football-only leagues and another proposal for slight changes to league and conference lineups in all other sports were approved by Orange County’s high school principals in a meeting on Monday, May 15.

Both proposals will go to the CIF-Southern Section Council for approval in October, and if approved, which seems likely, the new leagues would go into effect in the fall of 2024. The county’s athletic directors approved three football proposals and three all-sports proposals at their meeting last month for the principals’ perusal.

The headlining shift would be the cre- ation of football-specific leagues based on a two-year performance ranking system for every team in Orange County, except the six teams of the Trinity League, which will remain intact as is.

It’s unclear how these leagues will be named, but for football, the South Coast and Sea View Leagues, as they’ve been known, will be gone.

The rankings will be based upon team performance from the previous two seasons with the rankings weighted with 65% of the points from the most recent season and 35% coming from the season prior to that. The top four teams in the rankings would make the top league, with nine six-team leagues to follow and a final five-team league at the bottom.

Rankings created by calpreps.com have been used by CIF-SS in recent seasons to dictate its playoff divisions at the end of the regular season, with the goal being greater competitive equity between playoff opponents.

For example, if last season’s CalPreps rankings were used to create football leagues for this fall, San Clemente would be the fourth team in that top-ranked league along with Los Alamitos, Mission Viejo and Edison, which all were placed in Division 1 of the CIF-SS playoffs. San Clemente was the final team in Division 2 last season.

Tesoro would be in the second league down, and San Juan Hills and Trabuco Hills would be in the third league. Capistrano Valley would be in the fourth, and Aliso Niguel would be in the fifth league. Dana Hills and El Toro would be in the sixth league.

For other local teams, St. Margaret’s would be in the eighth league. Capistrano Valley Christian, as a small school, is excluded from the Orange County region proposals.

However, that is just for football. In every other sport, the Coast View Conference will remain intact with one new addition to round out its numbers.

Beckman, a Tustin Unified School District public school in Irvine with an enrollment of more than 3,000 students, would join the South Coast and Sea View Leagues in all other sports if the proposal is approved by the CIF-SS Council in October.

Since the departure of Laguna Hills in all sports to the Pacific Coast League two years ago—Dana Hills had joined the league in football only—the Coast View Conference had an odd number of teams, which meant the South Coast and Sea View Leagues did not have an equal number of members. One league would have five and the other had four, which created scheduling issues and discrepancies.

Coast View athletic directors had expressed the desire to round out their number again, with either Beckman or Laguna Beach in the proposals sent to principals.