Lopez: A road well-traveled? Here’s how Modesto’s WAC teams feel about new conference

Last September, the Beyer girls volleyball team left the school’s campus at 1:30 p.m. and traveled to Pacheco High School for a league game.

The freshmen played at 4, the junior varsity at 5 before varsity finally took the court at 6.

By the time the players and coaches returned to Modesto from the nearly 50-mile trip to Los Banos, it was 9 p.m., a roughly 7 1/2-hour day to play a single league contest.

“We were there all day basically,” Beyer sophomore Olivia Keller said. “We are making sure that we are getting our stuff (homework) done ahead of time and asking teachers what we need to get done and doing it on the bus.”

The long commutes, the skyrocketing travel costs and lack of competitiveness in some sports have been just a couple of issues facing Beyer, Davis, and Johansen in their first year in the new Western Athletic Conference.

The move was part of the Sac-Joaquin Section’s realignment, which broke up the Modesto Metro Conference composed — in most sports — of the seven Modesto City public high schools. Every four years, the section realigns leagues for the sake of enrollment and competitive equity.

Travel really isn’t taken into account.

With Davis and Johansen — and Beyer in the so-called “minor sports” — finding it difficult to compete against bigger Gregori, Enochs, Downey and Modesto, those three teams were placed in the WAC, featuring smaller schools from Ceres, Los Banos, Lathrop and Mountain House, whose enrollments are more in line with the incoming Modesto schools.

Downey, Enochs, Modesto and Gregori, whose enrollments are larger, were moved into the new Central California Athletic League with nearby Turlock and Pitman.

What a year ago for Beyer, Davis and Johansen were crosstown trips for league matches turned into upwards of 90-plus-mile round trips. The move translated to roughly 50-mile trips Los Banos to play games against Pacheco and Los Banos, 40-mile excursions to Mountain House near the Altamont Pass, 35-mile bus rides to Lathrop and a simple 6-mile trip to Ceres.

Beyer volleyball coach Tony Silva said it was a challenge.

“We had to leave here pretty early to get there,” Silva said of the trip to play Pacheco. “It is what it is. Not a whole lot we can do about it.”

The long-distance trips forced Modesto City Schools to double its travel budgets for sports teams. The district had spent anywhere from $110,000 to $168,000 the last four seasons leading into the 2018-2019 school. The budget for this school year is $350,000.

“A school district being its own athletic conference is not the norm,” Modesto City Schools Public Information Officer Becky Fortuna stated. “Other school districts have been doing what our coaches, parents, and student athletes are learning to do now — leaving early, staying late, and completing homework on the road. It will take some time to adjust to his new normal.”

More success on the fields, courts

A New Trend?

One “new normal” is what the section had hoped to create — competitive equity among its schools throughout the Northern San Joaquin Valley

Outside of Beyer, which was competitive recently in the former MMC in football, baseball and basketball, victories in most sports were hard to come by at typically outmanned Johansen and Davis high schools.

The Davis football team had won just one MMC game the last two years before going 4-3 in the WAC. The Johansen boys soccer team had gone 6-14-3 in the MMC the last two seasons before going 12-0-2 last fall, winning a conference title.

Rhoda Taylor, who is the Johansen activities director and has a daughter on the tennis team and a son on the water polo team, said it is hard for school morale when you are losing in every sport. She said the change to a new league has created success.

“We were defeated in pretty much every single sport all the time,” Taylor said.

This year, of the 24 fall and winter sport teams at Beyer, Davis, and Johansen, 12 improved their league record from the previous two years in the Modesto Metro Conference while 10 stayed the same and two saw their records decrease.

“It’s a pretty good league from a competitive standpoint,” section assistant commissioner Will DeBoard said. “They are having more success at the league level. We haven’t received calls with complaints like we have with others leagues.”

I agree. In the end, the move by the section was a smart one.

Success at Johansen High

One of the biggest success stories was the Johansen boys soccer team.

The Vikings won the school’s first league title since 2006 and only third in school history.

“Johansen has benefited from its placement in the WAC, which I attribute to competing against schools with similar school populations,” Vikings coach Ryan White said. “Regardless of the sport, when we are competing against a school with a significantly larger population, it makes it more difficult because we have less athletes to select from.”

Johansen senior Alan Yepez finished his third year on the Vikings’ varsity team and he enjoyed the new league.

“There really isn’t anything I can say that I did not like about this new league,” Yepez, one of the captains, said. “It was competitive and we played new teams.”

Yepez said the team had more opportunities to play on their own field instead of neutral sites in Modesto. In the old MMC, most games were played at Mary Grogan Community Park while each home game in the WAC was played at Johansen.

“This gave us a sense of pride for being able to defend our jersey in our home turf,” he said.

Some teams (Beyer girls volleyball and Johansen boys water polo) felt the competition decreased, although they would most likely have dominated in any league.

What Beyer boys basketball coach Kyle McKim missed about the old MMC was having Modesto Christian in its league. The Crusaders were in the MMC for basketball only before moving into the Tri-City Athletic League this year.

“Playing in the same league as them was the best thing that ever happened to our program,” McKim said. “It forced us to raise the bar for our entire program. We definitely miss having a team of that caliber as a league opponent.”

Libby Cardozo, a Beyer cross country mom, said while all the new schools have been great competitors and friendly, the competition isn’t as good as the old MMC.

“Stronger competition had its benefits,” Cardozo said. “Our boys run well because Gregori, Enochs and Mo High run better. You always have a chance to bring your game up. We don’t have much to strive to get upward and get over now.”

Another downer? With the end of the MMC, came the end of rivalry games or competition among athletes who grew up playing on similar travel teams or in Modesto-based sports leagues. The Sylvan Showdown between Enochs and Beyer? It was something to look forward to for the student-athletes. Gregori-Davis games often brought coaches and athletes who had been together at Davis before Gregori opened.

Still, while the travel has been long, some have found a positive out of the hours-long roundtrips.

“You get to make memories on the bus rides,” Beyer senior volleyball player Camryn Wong said.

What does the future hold for the WAC? Will Beyer, Davis and Johansen remain when the section resets in a few years?

We’ll have to wait and see. But, so far, so good for the section and its far-flung conference.

Bee reporter Deke Farrow contributed to this story.

This story was originally published March 28, 2019 at 6:24 AM.

Julian A. Lopez

The Modesto Bee

562-206-9393

Julian A. Lopez has been covering local sports for The Modesto Bee since August 2018. He graduated from Arizona State in 2016 with a BA in Journalism.