Schools administrators and athletic officials from New Philadelphia to Marion are patting themselves on the back and with good reason.
The Ohio Cardinal Conference and Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference both added eighth members within the past month, bringing stability to the conference homes of north central Ohio’s eight biggest high schools.
The MOAC, which includes Ontario, Clear Fork, Shelby and Galion, welcomed Highland in mid-March. Last week, the OCC, home to Mansfield Senior, Madison, Lexington and Ashland, opened its doors to New Philadelphia.
Highland was a charter member of the MOAC and spent 27 years in the conference before leaving for the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference. Geography notwithstanding, the Scots were never a great fit in the KMAC. Highland has a significantly bigger student enrollment and the chasm was only getting wider.
The Scots are Division IV in football while the rest of the KMAC is comprised of Division VI schools, with the exception of Division VII Danville.
A return to the MOAC aligns Highland with like-sized schools. Five of the eight members in the conference compete in Division IV in football.
New Philadelphia is making the move to the OCC from the East Central Ohio League. The Quakers have been searching for a more stable environment since 2018, when Coshocton, Meadowbrook, River View and Zanesville announced they would withdraw from the ECOL.
That leaves only New Philadelphia, Dover, Cambridge, Marietta and new addition Vincent Warren in the ECOL.
It’s a homecoming of sorts for New Philadelphia. The school used to compete in the Cardinal Conference along with current OCC members Madison, Ashland and Wooster.
New Philadelphia is a Division III school in football, which fits the OCC’s profile perfectly. Mansfield Senior, Madison, Lexington, Ashland and West Holmes are all Division III schools, while Mount Vernon and Wooster are Division II.
While there are plenty of reasons for optimism, both conferences have some issues to tackle.
Even with the addition of Highland, the MOAC is still facing an enrollment disparity. The conference’s biggest school, Marion Harding, has a student population that dwarfs everyone else in the league.
The Ohio Department of Education provides enrollment figures to the Ohio High School Athletic Association, which uses the data to determine the tournament divisions for each of its member schools every two years. The most recent enrollment figures were made available in February of 2019 and at the time, Marion Harding had 854 students in grades 9 to 11. The next biggest school in the MOAC, River Valley, had 487 students, while the MOAC’s smallest member, Marion Pleasant, had 304 students.
While Pleasant has a proud athletic tradition, competing against a school Marion Harding’s size every year is a big task. With 449 boys, Marion Harding competes in Division II in football. Pleasant (166 boys) is Division V. Pleasant was 9-3 and advanced to the second round of the playoffs last fall. One of its two regular-season losses was to Harding (7-3). It was Harding’s only conference victory and cost Pleasant a share of the MOAC title.
The OCC, meanwhile, has a geography problem. The conference’s eight schools are spread across six counties. New Philadelphia is closer to Wheeling, West Virginia (59.7 miles) than it is to Mansfield Senior (71.1 miles), Lexington (71.1 miles), Mount Vernon (69.7 miles), Madison (66.9 miles) or Ashland (61.2 miles).
The Quakers were already making long bus rides in the ECOL and they are only going to get longer with the addition of Vincent Warren. Marietta is 81.2 miles from New Philadelphia and Vincent Warren is 94.6 miles away.
At any rate, having a conference home in the north central-Ohio based OCC is better than going it alone as an independent. That might have been New Philadelphia’s fate as it’s hard to imagine the ECOL surviving with only five schools.
Perhaps the biggest X-factor in all of this conference shuffling is the KMAC. The now seven-team league has an opening and how they fill it could send shockwaves rippling throughout the region.
If the KMAC wants to expand to the north, Loudonville and Lucas of the Mid-Buckeye Conference are strong contenders. Only three of the six MBC members — Loudonville, Lucas and Crestline — play football. Lucas competes as an independent while Loudonville is a football-only member of the Principals Athletic Conference. If an offer to join the KMAC was extended to Loudonville and the Redbirds accepted, that would create an opening in both the MBC and the PAC.
Some OCC officials have expressed concern that West Holmes, the smallest school in the OCC, may make a play for a PAC vacancy. The PAC is comprised of schools from Stark, Summit and Wayne Counties, and West Holmes has a history with most of them — several were members of the All-Ohio Conference, which disbanded in the late 1980s. West Holmes would be the biggest member of the PAC. The other schools in the conference are Division IV and Division V in football.
If the KMAC looks to the south, current Licking County League members Northridge and Utica are the strongest contenders. Northridge would be the logical choice in terms of enrollment and a portion of the Northridge district stretches into Knox County. If either Northridge or Utica were to jump to the KMAC, an opening in the LCL would exist. The LCL is currently a 10-team league divided into big-school (Buckeye) and small-school (Cardinal) divisions. Both Northridge and Utica are Cardinal Division members. There will be some divisional re-shuffling when Zanesville joins the LCL from the ECOL next fall and slots into the Buckeye Division.
There has been some talk of the LCL expanding to two eight-team divisions. If that happens, the league would almost certainly restart its courtship of Mount Vernon as a possible addition in the big-school division.
There have been some rumblings that the KMAC wants to add three schools and go to a two-division format based on geography (east and west). If that happens, there would likely be openings in both the PAC and the LCL and OCC schools would be candidates to fill those openings in both leagues.
While most of north central Ohio’s schools have found some degree of conference stability, at least for the foreseeable future, there’s no question more changes are on the horizon. The game of musical chairs is sure to continue and nobody wants to be left without a seat when the music stops playing.
