Though Los Padres League officials voted to suspend freshman high school sports in 2010-11, the move doesn’t mean incoming student-athletes won’t be able to play, according to league officials and school athletic directors.
Principals for the seven schools in the Los Padres League voted unanimously to cut freshmen athletic programs back in January. The decision came as a result of a proactive approach to budget cuts by league athletic directors, according to John Andree, Morro Bay High School athletic director and league secretary.
“We didn’t want the board to come and say, ‘This is what’s going to happen to you, now find the money and keep these teams going,’” Andree said. “We felt like we’re going to be involved in this and see if we can help out before they have to come and lower the axe on us.”
Faced with the possibility of losing some sports altogether, Andree said chopping freshmen schedules made sense because most schools weren’t able to field freshman teams in every sport.
“We didn’t like it. It’s not something we wanted to do, but both us and the principals felt like it was something we had to do,” he said. “At most of these school districts, where else can you cut? The next step is to start cutting sports and athletics altogether.”
Andree said the cuts would save about $30,000 in coaching stipends and travel costs next year for each school and would be considered a temporary fix until reevaluation
in 2011.
Of the seven schools in the Los Padres League, the impact of the decision might be felt most at Santa Maria High School. The campus is located in an open enrollment district and faces competition for student-athletes from Righetti and Pioneer Valley—both in the Pac-7.
Santa Maria’s girls’ basketball coach Courtney Cameron said she’s worried she might lose girls to other schools and worries the lack of a freshman schedule will have a negative impact on her students’ athletic development.
“It’s taking a lot of the girls out of the program,” Cameron said. “If they’re not good enough as freshmen then we just have to hope that they come out as sophomores. It’s going to make it really difficult to build a program.”
Despite the lack of a schedule, individual schools will still have the option of including freshmen on junior varsity teams and playing them in non-league games and tournaments. Girls’ basketball is one of four freshman sports Santa Maria High School offers, and athletic director Ralph Baldiviez is determined to keep them all afloat one way or another.
“We are going to have freshman sports,” Baldiviez said. “As far as football is concerned, we’ll probably play an abbreviated schedule but we are planning on having a freshman team as long as we have enough kids come out.”Lompoc High School is one of the few other Los Padres League schools to field a freshman football team. School athletic director Donnie Cross said he intends on the team playing at least the four non-league contests they’ve already scheduled.
“I’ve already had 60 eighth-graders sign up for it,” Cross said of the freshman team. “It doesn’t make any sense from the school’s standpoint to turn 60 kids away. We intend to have frosh-sophs in every sport like we always do.”
With St. Joseph High School moving to the Pac-7 next year, Cross said the school was already considering cutting freshman baseball due to a lack of opponents. The school has also offered freshmen girls’ volleyball and boys and girls’ basketball in the past, but will look at continuing those programs on a case-by-case basis. If enough students express interest, Cross said, a freelance schedule could be developed to give freshmen an opportunity to learn and develop.
“It’s not our mission to turn kids loose,” he said. “The community wants us to keep these kids involved in school. Every study you look at says kids that are involved in athletics do better academically and attendance-wise. They graduate. That’s our goal. So we have to find a way to keep the kids involved, no doubt about it.”
According to Cross, the cuts will save about $25,000 in insurance and travel costs during the next school year between Lompoc and Cabrillo high schools. He said the school would have to find alternative ways of getting freshmen to games, through carpooling or fundraising to pay for bus trips.
“The impact is that we’re going to have to try to raise funds because the district is going to take the fact that the league’s not having it to not fund the coaching stipends,” Cross said. “Either we’re going to have to staff it in-house and have somebody have double-duty or we’re going to have to raise funds for a stipend.”
Across town at Cabrillo, athletic director Bob Lawrence said he doesn’t anticipate having to drop any freshmen teams.
“We may have fewer stipends and have to transport our kids differently but it’s not our intent to drop any freshmen sports,” Lawrence said. “We don’t want those kids going someplace else and our coaches don’t want the programs to go away.”
At Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, three of the four freshman sports were on the verge of being phased out anyway, according to athletic director Ken Fredrickson. He said the cuts would result in moving junior varsity and varsity games to earlier in the day and could save the school up to $15,000.
“It’s really not much of an impact,” Fredrickson said. “If we don’t have a freshman girls basketball team then we could probably field a larger JV squad.”
As for her girls’ basketball squad, Santa Maria’s Cameron said she’s had plenty of interest from incoming freshmen. However, she’s taking a wait-and-see attitude about having a freshman team this year.
“We’re just trying to explore different options to try to still have those girls get involved,” Cameron said. “If they sit out an entire season, then it’s going to make it really difficult for them to develop into an actual JV player.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas can be contacted at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 6, 2010.