OVS athletics’ shift to the Omega League has been very good to the Spuds.
The 2021-2022 school year brought many changes to the Upper Campus, including a move for all OVS athletic teams from the Condor League to the much larger Omega League.
In their first full year in Omega, the Spuds won league titles in four sports; boys cross country, boys soccer, baseball, and golf. Three of those teams — cross country, soccer and baseball — went on to complete in CIF playoffs.
Moreover, OVS sports teams earned CIF playoff appearances in girls and boys volleyball, boys basketball, and girls individual cross country.
“It’s been very successful,” said Upper Campus Athletic Director Doug Colborn. “We are blessed right now with a solid group of student-athletes.”
Since the 1960s, the Spuds competed in the Condor League, which had multiple 805 and surrounding area schools represented in the league such as Villanova, Thacher, Oak Grove, Besant Hill, Cate, Midland, and Dunn.
The league would eventually shrink as ‘Nova would depart after the 2005-06 school year; Thacher and Cate would follow suit about a decade later to be able to continue their 8-man football programs.
Once the bigger schools left, some of the smaller Condor League schools stopped fielding teams, making it extremely challenging for OVS to continue with some of the sports it offered in its athletic program.
“We would be scrambling for games,” Mr. Colborn said. “We’d end up with like five or six games a season… it sucked.”
OVS baseball led the way.
In the spring sports season of 2017, it became the first OVS sports team to officially join the Omega League. The Spuds would finish in the middle of the pack in that initial year, but they have since won three league titles, while earning four CIF playoff appearances.
While OVS would continue to compete in the Condor League in a variety of sports, girls and boys cross-country and track & field would quickly follow baseball into the Omega League. Those were the only Omega League teams until this year, when the entire athletics program made the shift.
In Omega League play the Spuds have racked up numerous playoff appearances, all-league awards, league MVP’s, and league championship titles.
But the most impressive feat of all is that OVS, with a student body population of around 80, is capable of fielding as many or more sports than any of the other schools in the Omega league.
The OVS student body population is the second smallest school in the Omega League.
However, Mr. Colborn had absolutely zero reservations about switching leagues, saying he excited to be in a much more competitive sports league.
“This move was made with the intention of strengthening our athletic program,” Mr. Colborn said.
With OVS now in the Omega League full-time it has had quite the impression on the schools in the league. The boys cross country gave longtime coach Fred Alvarez his first boys league title.
“Our girls teams have won lots of league titles, but not so for the boys,” coach Alvarez said. “The boys winning that cross-country championship, that league championship was pretty special to me as much as (I hope) it was to them.”
The transition to the Omega League was eye opening to many of OVS’s student athletes.
“I didn’t know about the league switch directly,” said sophomore Donahi Soriano, who plays volleyball and basketball. “But I did realize that the teams were getting a little better than we played last year.”
Once competitions began students quickly figured out that something had changed with the athletics program on the hill.
The Omega league provides the Spuds with the best opportunity to compete in multitude of sports while not having to worry about a lack of teams to play against. Having schools to play, fields/courts to play on, and a group of competitive student-athletes have helped propel the Spuds into early success in the Omega league.
“There’s good balance, so I think it’s the perfect league for us,” Mr. Alvarez said.
