Who’s playing in what league?
It’s a quiz even the most ardent local football fan would struggle to ace every two seasons, when local high school administrators implement releaguing plans finalized months ago.
How many remember Newbury Park, Moorpark, Ventura and Agoura are among the football programs who have climbed up the five-league Northern Area ladder?
Who would respond that Camarillo, Calabasas and Royal have shifted down?
And only the most locked-in observers would explain that the defunct Conejo Coast League is now the Channel League and the former Channel League is now the only league with a new name, the Coastal 101 League.
Is the room spinning yet?
The biannual shuffling of league names and the schools that constitute them can understandably
get confusing, so let’s review as we get closer and closer to the 2026 football season.
The top-tier Marmonte League will consist of Bishop Diego, Newbury Park, Oaks Christian, Pacifica, Simi Valley and St. Bonaventure.
Moorpark, Rio Mesa, Santa Barbara, Thousand Oaks, Ventura and Westlake will contest the second-tier Channel League.
The third-tier league, now named the Coastal 101, includes Agoura, Buena, Calabasas, Camarillo, Oak Park and Oxnard.
The fourth-tier league remains the Tri-County League, although Dos Pueblos, Fillmore, Hueneme, Royal, San Marcos and Santa Paula only represent two counties this season.
The Citrus Coast League, with Carpinteria, Channel Islands, Del Sol, Grace, Nordhoff and Santa Clara, is the only league to remain untouched.
The 2026-27 releaguing plan was approved on May 7, 2025, when representatives from 37 schools gathered at Camarillo High to finalize configurations for the 2026-27 football cycle and 2026-30 all-league cycle.
The biggest non-football change involved Channel Islands and Del Sol, who joined the former Channel League to form a 10-team Channel Association. Malibu also moved from the Citrus Coast to the Tri-County Athletic Association.
As part of the process, Marmonte League schools requested the football leagues be renamed ahead of the 2026 season.
That request was largely ignored, as only the third-tier league granted the wish.
League president Tim Chevalier of Oak Park asked member schools to come up with a list of potential league names last year.
“We were told that we could not be the Channel League,” Chevalier said. “That we had to be something else.”
The league whittled the suggestions down to three names and “Coastal 101,” suggested by Agoura athletic director Clint Cummings, was selected.
Cummings took the world “Coastal” from the Coastal Canyon League and added the “101” since all six member schools sit along Highway 101.
“That was the whole thought,” Cummings said.
Meanwhile, with Moorpark and Ventura moving up from last year’s Channel League, the second-tier league quickly voted to use the Channel name.
“You can pick whatever name you want,” league president Rob Dearborn of Moorpark said. “It’s very important to Ventura that that league name stays Channel.”
Joe Curley covers football for The Star. He can be reached at joe.curley@vcstar.com. For more coverage, follow @vcspreps on Twitter/X, Instagram/Threads, Facebook, Bluesky and TikTok.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Check out high school football league configurations for 2026 season
