DOVER — The Ohio Cardinal Conference’s newest member can’t wait to get started.
Dover will begin league play in the fall of 2025 after the Dover City Schools Board of Education voted unanimously earlier this month to accept the OCC’s invitation. The Tornadoes will replace Mount Vernon as the Yellow Jackets shift to the Licking County League this fall.
Finding a suitable conference home has been Dover athletic director Tim McCrate’s top priority ever since the East Central Ohio League broke up following the 2021-22 school year. Dover was a member of the ECOL from 1993 until the league disbanded.
“People always tell me that we should join this league or play that opponent. I tell them it’s like a middle school dance. You might have your eye on somebody, but if they say they don’t want to dance then there’s no dancing,” McCrate said recently. “When you talk to athletic directors, we live in a different world. We have a lot of moving parts to fit together. It’s not as easy as people think.”
Conference History
Historically, Dover has enjoyed conference stability dating to its time in the Central Ohio League (1941-1957). Dover was a charter member of the Cardinal Conference — along with Madison, Ashland and Wooster — and stayed in the league from its inception in 1960 until it broke up after the 1986-87 school year.
Short stints in the Senate League (1987-1989) and the Northeastern Buckeye Conference (1989-1993) followed before Dover landed in the ECOL in the fall of 1993. After the ECOL splintered, Dover found a home in the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference.
The OVAC is a loose affiliation of more than 50 high schools in Ohio and West Virginia. The league doesn’t enforce mandatory scheduling, which means Dover has operated as a de facto independent since the ECOL split.
“The OVAC covers a massive geographic area and, in terms of schools, there’s a massive difference in enrollment from top to bottom,” McCrate said. “To play in some of their tournaments, you have to hit a standard of playing so many games before the cut-off date, which is hard to do. Between geography and competition … the other schools have to be willing to play you and there are factors that undermine that.
“The OVAC puts on spectacular championship events … but we can’t always qualify because we don’t always hit the standard for the minimum number of (OVAC) games to qualify for some of their tournaments. That’s the challenge. We just found out we couldn’t get a waiver to participate in their basketball tournament. Because there’s not required scheduling, we didn’t hit the minimum number of games to qualify.”
That won’t be an issue in the OCC.
“In the OCC, with required scheduling, you don’t have to worry about meeting the standard,” McCrate said. “We’re thrilled to be in the league.”
‘A Good Day for Dover’
The OCC’s invitation to Dover was met with unbridled enthusiasm among Dover school officials.
“It’s a quality conference and I feel we should be honored to be invited,” board vice president John Maxwell said during a Jan. 11 meeting. “It’s a good day for Dover City Schools.”
Finding a stable conference home has been one of Dover’s biggest challenges for the better part of the past decade. The winds of change began blowing in the ECOL in 2015 and by the time the league disbanded only four teams remained.
“This is something that’s been a thorn in a side of our students and this administration and this board for a long time,” school board president Kyle Stemple said. “I think it’s a good fit for us and I’m excited for our students.”
Fitting The Profile
The Ohio High School Athletic Association began collecting preliminary enrollment data from the Ohio Department of Education in early-January. The enrollment figures reflect the number of students each member school had in grades 9 through 11 as of Oct. 31, 2023 and will be used to determine tournament divisions for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.
Of the eight schools that will comprise the OCC in the fall of 2025, Dover ranks fifth in boys enrollment (353) and third in girls enrollment (341).
Dover offers 11 boys sports and 10 girls sports — on par with the other OCC members. A new three-story, 178,000 square foot high school was opened in September of 2020.
“Dover has a brand new school. It opened a year before Lexington opened its new building and it is a beautiful school,” said OCC Commissioner and Dover High School graduate Ron Dessecker. “They’ve got the old gym that they had played in for 50 years as a secondary gym. I think Dover’s addition will be excellent.”
Work To Be Done
While Dover brings a strong athletic tradition to the OCC, McCrate said winning championships won’t come easy. He looks forward to seeing the districts athletes challenge themselves.
“We respect the level of competition of the league we’re joining. It is a fantastically competitive league,” McCrate said. “We have a lot of growing to do to compete in this league.”