An extreme makeover is coming following the 2025-2026 school year

The landscape of Southern Section high school sports in the East San Fernando Valley, adjacent Foothill regions and the West San Gabriel Valley will be changing following the 2025-2026 school year, as the Pacific League will be expanding from eight to 16 teams. The growth comes as a result of a merger of the Pacific and Rio Hondo Leagues to create more competition within the San Fernando Valley and Foothill regions. There were two different options up for vote and Proposal C beat out Proposal A in a 34-20 result. Here is a breakdown of both proposals in the Pacific League Realignment: 

“I’m excited about this new change, this gives more of an opportunity for schools to play more competitively within their skill level,” said Burbank High School Athletic Director Allison McKain. McKain also said that this promotes more competitive equity in play and forward thinking.

“This was brought up two years ago by John Muir High School. They wanted a large conference with three separate leagues within,” said Keith Knoop. Knoop mentioned that this would give high school sports more competitive equity for the upper-middle and lower teams in the Pacific League. 

Proposal C featured 16 teams, while Proposal A featured 10 teams, and this new alignment will provide more exciting competition for student athletes and their school fans. However, it also eliminates some league rivalry games we have come to enjoy, such as Arcadia playing Crescenta Valley on the final game of the regular season in every sport.

Traditional contests, such as Burbank versus Burroughs, Glendale versus Hoover, and Muir versus Pasadena, will most likely still be played regardless of league groupings. If either of those teams does not get placed in the same league in the new format, it could be safe to assume that they would face each other as part of a cross-conference contest.

Also, in this new format, the San Gabriel Valley will finally have the opportunity to see more geographic rivalry games within their region, such as Arcadia versus Monrovia, Muir versus San Marino, along with Pasadena versus. South Pasadena. Plus, Crescenta Valley will potentially get its own rivalry game within its region and with La Canada joining the expanded Pacific League. 

A beneficiary of this new format are those who want to see competitive league contests. Spectators will no longer see Burbank beat Glendale and Hoover by lopsided scores in football every year. All 16 teams in the Pacific League for each sport will be placed in one of groups A, B, and C when the 2026-2027 school year begins. The groupings will be based on the final regular season CIF rankings of each team from the previous season . The top five teams will be in group A, the middle five teams will be in group B and the bottom six teams will be in group C. 

As for playing seedings, each group will have three out of five teams qualify for the CIF Southern Section playoffs in sports such as Basketball, Baseball, Softball, Volleyball, Soccer, and Water Polo. On the other hand, football is looking to form an eight-team playoff format with the top four teams coming from group A and the remaining teams coming from groups B and C.

“I’m very excited about this new change. This was a project that I was thinking about with high school sports for 13 years,” said John Muir Athletic Director Alfredo Resendiz. Resendiz also mentioned that the realignment took a lot of convincing, which started with conversations with John Muir High School Principal, Dr. Lawton Gray, and also proposed this idea in the Athletic Director meetings. 

This next school year will be the final seasons that the Pacific League will feature the current format, but this new change will provide more exciting competition in 2026 and beyond.