ECI independent schools face challenges

Conference changes leave schools searching for a league

 

Written by
Sam Wilson 
swilson@muncie.gannett.com

 

 

---story courtesy The Star Press of Muncie, Indiana – story from December of 2012

 

Southside athletic director Tom Lyon and Jay County athletic director Bob Lutton have a running joke that their football teams should play each other almost every week of the season. While the move would make each of their jobs considerably easier, they settle for an annual meeting and then go about the difficult task of filling the rest of their schedules.

Southside,
Jay County and Shenandoah are the three East Central Indiana schools that are independent in all sports. With talks of conference realignment sweeping the state, each school continues to monitor the landscape in hopes the right opportunity will come its way. In the meantime, they face the difficulties associated with independence.

Athletes at the three schools are unable to win conference championships. They can't earn honors for being named all-conference. And football scheduling can be especially tedious for an independent school.

Other sports have more flexible calendars, and independent schools can schedule opponents throughout the season with relative ease. Opponents have room for a one-game break from conference play at various points in the season, allowing an independent to fill a schedule. Six days of the week are also available for scheduling (the IHSAA allows no competition on Sundays), allowing even more flexibility.

Football schedules are far more rigid, with many conferences playing a seven-game schedule in weeks 2-8 or 3-9. That means there are nights when almost every school in the state with a conference affiliation is playing a conference foe, leaving independent schools desperate to find an opponent.

Teams also play once a week and almost exclusively on Fridays, so games can't be sneaked into the middle of the week like in other sports. Wes-Del and Monroe Central also face the challenge of filling a football schedule as an independent, though both of those schools have the benefit of Mid-Eastern Conference affiliation in other sports.

Independent teams sometimes use the Internet to find other schools looking to fill an open date.
Lyon said word-of-mouth also is critical, as athletic directors will sometimes alert him to another school that has an opening the same week Southside is looking.

Southside's 2012 season included playing the same opponent twice (
Connersville), along with long trips to Fort Loramie (Ohio) and South Dearborn. Southside and Jay County are both in their third year of independence after the Olympic Athletic Conference folded. Anderson Highland's closure cut the conference to three schools, a number the remaining schools didn't find feasible.

Current seniors at Southside and
Jay County were freshmen during the final year of the Olympic Athletic Conference. Most of the athletes at those schools have never been in a conference during their high school careers.

"The real reasons to be in a conference are for your kids,"
Lyon said. "Because not everybody is going to win a sectional. But you might win your conference. Or you might be an all-conference candidate. Or you might be an academic all-conference. So there's some things that kids can get. Outside of just winning the games, there's some other things that they can get that our kids don't get anymore. There's no longer an all-conference football player for Muncie South."

Southside football player McKenzee Nash remembers being named honorable mention all-conference as a freshman. He set a goal to be first team all-conference the following year, but never got a chance to follow through on his pursuit. He's since had discussions with other athletes at his school about what it would be like if they had a chance at all-conference honors.

"We've all talked about wishing we were in a conference. Southside used to be in one of the toughest conferences with
Carmel and Huntington North and all them," Nash said. "It would still be fun to be in that conference. But yeah, a lot of us have talked about wanting to get all-conference honors. But not being in a conference doesn't let us get one."

Jay County's Katie Snyder remembers her team winning the Olympic girls track meet her freshman year. The Patriots have had success in the years since on the track, but she hasn't had the chance to help defend that crown.

"That would be nice to have," Snyder said. "Like I could say we were conference champions all four years. But since they cut it out, it's kind of like one of those things, 'Oh, you don't really have that anymore.' "

Southside has had discussions about joining the Hoosier Heritage Conference, the current home of
Delaware County schools Delta and Yorktown, Lyon said. Rushville will be departing that league after this school year for the Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference, leaving the HHC in search of a new eighth member. The HHC has also considered expanding beyond eight schools when it replaces Rushville, Shelbyville principal and conference president Tom Zobel said.

So far Southside's interaction with the HHC has been limited to preliminary discussions. The two sides have not advanced to a formal application stage in the process.

The Rebels' 2013 football schedule will feel similar to that of an HHC school, though. They'll play five of the conference's teams, helping some of those schools fill the weeks they once used to play Rushville and also maintaining a prior agreement with
Yorktown.

Lyon hopes the conference will see it as a good-faith gesture from Southside, and that Southside's independence will work to its advantage. It would be able to pick up a football schedule in a new conference more quickly than a school locked into contracts with an old league.

The scheduling agreements have a risk, too. Should the Hoosier Heritage Conference find a new full member other than Southside, it would likely need some of those dates back for its new school, more likely in 2014, the second year of Southside's two-year contracts with the HHC schools. That would leave Southside left to search to fill those weeks once again.

"Which is a scary proposition, to be empty five weeks,"
Lyon said. "Football is a bear to schedule."

Could Southside land in the NCC?

The North Central Conference, home of Southside's city rival Central, is also mulling expansion,
Anderson athletic director Steve Schindler said. Anderson holds the presidency of the NCC under its rotation system. At this point, Schindler said, the conference has discussed if and how it would want to expand, but no schools have formally applied. The conference's schools also have not definitively agreed they want to expand, Schindler said.

Lafayette Jefferson athletic director Mark Preston said his school, Harrison and McCutcheon have had discussions about joining the North Central Conference. After the 2013-14 school year, the seven Indianapolis-area schools in the Hoosier Crossroads Conference will be parting ways with the three Lafayette-area schools, leaving them in search of a new home.

Lyon said Southside was not contacted by the North Central Conference as part of the recent discussion about expansion. Schindler said Southside is among the list of schools the conference has discussed as it mulls expansion.

The North Central Conference and Hoosier Heritage Conference would be the two most logical fits for Southside,
Lyon said, based on size of schools and geography.

The Central Indiana Conference might also be a possibility, he said, but Southside would stretch that league's geography. And while recent enrollment declines have pushed Southside closer in size to many CIC schools (
Alexandria, Blackford, Eastbrook, Elwood, Frankton, Madison-Grant, Mississinewa, Oak Hill), the Rebels traditionally have larger enrollment numbers than those schools.

As he attempts to find a conference home for the Rebels,
Lyon said he hears rumors of Southside closing and that talk of school consolidation comes up in conference discussions. It's something he tries to dispel as just a rumor. He also mentions that he's making four-year agreements with schools when he schedules events, a sign he doesn't anticipate Southside closing.

"I can't find anybody that will tell me that Muncie South is closing,"
Lyon said. "I don't think our school board is looking to do that. I don't think our superintendent is looking to do that. So if that's our stumbling block, then that's very frustrating. Because I've tried to do some things that would put us in a good position to join another conference."

Jay County looks at several options

Like Lyon,
Jay County's Lutton also is in search of a conference home for his school. As he talks about the process, Lutton frequently turns to what he thinks Jay County has to offer for a potential conference home.

He said he's sent letters of interest to a variety of conferences hoping to be considered if they're interested in expansion. The list of conferences they've inquired about include the Central Indiana Conference and Hoosier Heritage Conference, among others. He's also expressed interest to the North Central Conference, he said.

He says he's sent letters in all directions inquiring about potential homes for the Patriots. He'd be willing to speak to a wide variety of conferences, though he said he would be more selective before officially agreeing to join.

"We're a good school, we're competitive, we offer all the sports," Lutton said. "And we'd like to be a part of something. It's not always good being independent. It's tough."

Lutton still has a week open on his 2013 football schedule, and he's tried a variety of measures to fill it. The opening is listed on a message board for
Ohio schools.

The Patriots are even checking a message board in
Michigan to see if a school in that state could fill the date, Lutton said. Mapquest estimates a two-hour drive from Portland to even the closest locations in Michigan, though, so one of the teams would likely be looking at a long drive to play the game if the solution was a school in that state. Even if a school in Michigan could fill the date, Lutton said he'd have to weigh the distance and travel cost before agreeing to the game.

Lutton believes geography is
Jay County's biggest obstacle, with Portland caught in between the footprints of various conferences. For example, adding Jay County would require the CIC to expand its footprint to the east. For the HHC, it would require an expansion to the northeast to add the Patriots. He also describes his school's size as something of a "tweener," too big for some conferences and too small for others.

Shenandoah looks for the right fit

Shenandoah athletic director Todd Salkoski also would like to see his school find a conference, but only one that would be the right fit. The Raiders have been independent since the White River Athletic Conference folded.

Salkoski said his school is perhaps unique in that it doesn't celebrate conference championships with the same vigor as other schools. Banners in the school's gymnasium don't even list any conference championships, he said. The trophies can be found in trophy cases at Shenandoah, but they're not celebrated on the banners the way a sectional or regional title is.

"I don't know, it's just something that's a little bit different," Salkoski said. "You go in most people's gyms, you can see where they've won county championships or they've won conference championships, or sectional, regional and so forth. But in ours, it only has IHSAA championships."

Shenandoah has been declined by the Tri-Eastern Conference, and has also had talks with the Central Indiana Conference and the Mid-Eastern Conference, Salkoski said. So far, those talks haven't led to an invitation to join a league.

In Salkoski's three years as athletic director, he's seen the majority of his football schedule change. Six weeks on the schedule have shifted, either because an opponent now plays the Raiders in a different week or doesn't play Shenandoah at all.

The
White River broke up following the departure of Lapel to the Indiana Crossroads Conference. Salkoski said Shenandoah did not proceed with talks about possibly joining the Indiana Crossroads because it was not interested in extensive travel to Indianapolis.

The Raiders still are not interested in joining a league that would require long trips to
Indianapolis or elsewhere, he said. Salkoski leaves open the possibility that realignment moves could have a trickle-down effect that pulls Shenandoah into a conference. But he doesn't see a viable possibility for the Raiders in the current landscape.

Lyon does believe that conference realignment will eventually come to the region. But he's not sure exactly what form it will take or where his school, Southside, and others will end up.

"I think there will be some more conference shuffling,"
Lyon said. "And at some point in time, it will make its way over to East Central Indiana. But we're not there yet."

Contact prep sports reporter Sam Wilson at 213-5807.

 

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