By Loren Kopff • @LorenKopff on X
The dominoes keep falling for the shifting of leagues as seven area schools were part of 55 schools that voted on re-leaguing for the beginning of the 2026-2027 academic year. The voting occurred last Thursday at the Whittier Union High School District office.
Six different proposals were submitted, and after four rounds of voting, Proposal C came out on top, 34-20.
The proposal calls for the 605 League, Almont League, Del Rio League, Foothill League, Mission Valley League, Pacific League, Rio Hondo League, and the Suburban Valley Conference (Gateway League and Mid-Cities League) to condense into four leagues ranging anywhere from seven schools to twenty schools. All the schools involved are from the Foothill Area, with the addition of Gabrielino High and Marshall Fundamental High.
The league, consisting of twenty schools, involves the current 605 League, Del Rio League, Gateway League, and Mid-Cities League, which currently have a combined 22 schools.
Dominguez High, part of the Suburban Valley Conference, will move into another league not part of the Foothill Area, and El Rancho High, from the Del Rio League, will partner with schools currently in the Almont League and Mission Valley League.
Names of the new conference and/or leagues will be revealed sometime during the 2025-2026 school year. This is the third time since the 2018-2019 school year that the seven area schools have been part of such a change. It began with the defection of Artesia High, Cerritos High and John Glenn High from the Suburban League, Oxford Academy and Whitney High from the Academy League and Pioneer High from the Del Rio League. Those six schools formed the 605 League, leaving the Suburban League with Bellflower High, La Mirada High, Mayfair High and Norwalk High.
Beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, the four Suburban League schools joined forces with the six San Gabriel Valley League schools-Dominguez, Downey High, Gahr High, Lynwood High, Paramount High and Warren High plus Firebaugh High, and branched into two leagues with the top five in each sport based off their records from the previous season being put into the Gateway League and the other six in the Mid-Cities League.
Proposal A, which garnered 20 votes in the final round, would have called for the 605 League and Del Rio League to join forces with the Suburban Valley Conference while adding El Rancho to the Almont League and Blair High to the Pacific League.
Whitney principal Tuesday Stoffers, the 605 League president, had submitted another proposal that was voted 6-0 but according to co-athletic director Virginia Brice, one proposal was just as good as the next.
“We were going to have the same results no matter which proposal came about,” she said. “We weren’t invested in any one of the proposals more than the other when we came here.”
After the first round, Proposal A had 26 votes to 23 for Proposal C with the 605 League voting for the former while Gahr and Norwalk voted for Proposal C. La Mirada was the only school which voted for another proposal which lasted two rounds.
Proposal C was the leader after the second round, 31-21 and 37-17 after the third round. Artesia voted for Proposal A in the first three rounds and Cerritos in the first two rounds while John Glenn and Whitney switched to Proposal C after the first round. Gahr and Norwalk were the two area schools to vote for Proposal C in every round while La Mirada voted for Proposal C in the final three rounds.
The hope for the new conference/leagues is to allow more opportunities for teams that have been struggling to finish in the upper halves of their leagues to get them that automatic berth in the CIF-Southern Section playoffs. It will also increase the chances of teams winning league titles instead of finishing in third, fourth, or even fifth place.
“Hopefully, this will allow us to have more competitive equity for each sport,” said Brice. “We have some sports, for example girls water polo…we’re not even in a league right now. So, being in a conference would allow our girls water polo team to be in a league.”
Another example Brice used was tennis, which as she puts it, is split between ‘very high performing schools’ and ‘very low performing schools’. The new conference would give the ‘very high performing schools’ better opportunities to play more ‘high performing schools’ while the ‘lower performing schools’ would play more equitable schools.
Brice hopes this would give Whitney a middle ground from not only playing more superior schools but limiting the distance its teams were subjected to when the Wildcats were in the old Academy League and Delphic League. While in those two leagues, Whitney would have had to travel as far south as San Juan Capistrano or as far north the San Fernando Valley for league games.
She also said that the number of leagues will be determined next year will be based off participation per sport. There’s some speculation that the 20-school league will most likely be divided into three leagues. But it’s possible it could be a four-league conference. One thing to keep in mind as it relates to the major sports is that Oxford Academy and Whitney do not field football programs.
“All sports will not be the same,” said Brice. “But that’s what next year is for. That hasn’t been decided yet.”
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.