Santa Margarita Is Wasting Little Time in Starting a Winning Tradition

The Santa Margarita High School football team went 10-0. The girls’ volleyball team was 16-0. The boys’ and girls’ basketball teams were a combined 30-5.

Let that be a warning.

Santa Margarita, a parochial school that opened with only a freshman class of 230 last September in the developing community of Rancho Santa Margarita, is on its way to being an athletic power.

Although the 1987-88 records were all achieved by freshman teams playing a free-lance schedule, they are good indicators.

And the Eagles are building on a good foundation. Richard Schaaf, the athletic director, and three coaches--Jim Hartigan, Ray Huntington and Doug Williams--followed the principal, Father Michael Harris, to the new school from Mater Dei, a perennial power.

Hartigan coaches football, wrestling and track; Huntington coaches soccer and baseball, and Williams coaches boys’ tennis and helps coach football.

Those experienced coaches, with the help of athletic facilities and private funding, bode well for Santa Margarita, administrators say.

But for now, the teams are content to play a schedule mixed with strong programs such as Capistrano Valley and Mater Dei and smaller schools such as Capistrano Valley Christian.

The school itself is a couple of buildings and some finishing touches shy from completion. The campus will cover 40 acres when completed and will be capable of serving more than 2,200 students.

Even now, though, the facilities are outstanding.

The Eagles’ gymnasium is one of the county’s best, with backing for each seat, good ventilation and a public address system that is acoustically sound.

“One thing I learned at Mater Dei--with a great basketball program and a gym that had a capacity of 700--is the need for a facility that will allow the whole student body to see the team,” Harris said.

The playing fields are spacious and well-manicured. By 1990, the athletes will have a sports complex with a state-of-the art weight room and locker rooms.

“It’s great,” Schaaf said. “But it’s a little like moving into a new house: It looks great, you love it, but there are little things that go wrong--like a leaky faucet.”

One such dilemma is the location of the baseball field. The sun sets behind the backstop, making it hard on the pitchers and fielders.

The solution: The varsity and junior-varsity teams will switch fields.

“We couldn’t expand at Mater Dei,” Schaaf said. “It wasn’t a problem with fund-raising. We just had nowhere to build.”

But Santa Margarita has plenty of room in a section of the county that still has open space. The acreage the campus sits on was donated by Anthony R. Moiso, whose family controls a 16-mile stretch of land under the auspices of the Santa Margarita Co.

Moiso also is one of the leaders of the school’s fund-raising organization.

Despite the successes of the freshman teams, a better test will come next year when all sports except football will field teams in the Olympic League.

The average size of an Olympic League school is 440 students, with Ontario Christian being the smallest at 280 and Whittier Christian the largest at 880. Next year, Santa Margarita is expected to have a little more than 500 students.

But in two years, when the school will have a junior class, the school may be too large to compete in the Olympic League.

“They asked to come in (to the Olympic League) because the league is made up of private Christian schools,” said James DenOuden, president of the Olympic League and principal at Valley Christian. “They joined with the possibility of a two-year time block.

“In a couple years, they may very well be too big for the Olympic League.”

Bob Gonzales, Mater Dei’s athletic director, says that Santa Margarita will one day join the Angelus League.

“I’m sure that eventually they’ll move into a larger Catholic-school league once they reach the size that they intend to be,” he said.

But for the time being, Santa Margarita followers will have to be content with success on the lower levels.