EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a three-part series looking at schools shifting league and conference affiliations.
MANSFIELD, Ohio — For almost 50 years the Northern Ohio League was the model of stability.
So how did a league whose membership remained consistent for nearly half a century unravel so quickly?
It depends on who you ask — and there is no shortage of opinions floating around.
NOL president and Bellevue High School principal Nate Artino, in a 48-word press release distributed earlier this month, announced that six of the seven NOL schools were invited to join the Sandusky Bay Conference. The announcement came a week after Ontario, the seventh NOL member, accepted an offer to join the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference.
“Each Northern Ohio League school is excited about the future opportunities these new partnerships will create,” Artino said in the statement.
The changes will go into effect in the fall of 2017 as part of a massive reshuffling among area schools. This particular shift ends a conference that was formed in 1944. Four NOL schools, Shelby, Willard, Bellevue and Norwalk, were charter members. A fifth, Tiffin Columbian, joined in 1954 after Crestline departed.
From Tiffin Columbian’s arrival 1954 until Bucyrus left for the now-defunct North Central Conference in 2002, the Northern Ohio League makeup remained unchanged. Bucyrus’ departure ushered in an era of volatility and hastened the NOL’s demise.
Fostoria filled Bucyrus’ seat and stayed until 2011, when it joined the Northern Buckeye Conference. That same year, NOL Galion and Upper Sandusky exited to become the ninth and 10th members of an expanding North Central Conference.
Less than six months later, six of the 10 NCC members announced they would split off to form the Northern 10 Athletic Conference. Galion and Upper Sandusky, along with Ontario and Lucas, were left out of those conversations.
Meanwhile, Sandusky brought the Northern Ohio League membership to six in the fall of 2011 after the Greater Buckeye Conference folded. Ontario became the NOL’s seventh member in the fall of 2013. Galion was invited to re-join the Northern Ohio League but instead opted for a spot in the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference, as did Upper Sandusky. Upper Sandusky would ultimately end up in the Northern 10 Athletic Conference when Riverdale withdrew before the conference began play in the fall of 2014 to join the Blanchard Valley Conference.
So the Northern Ohio League, which enjoyed 48 years of tranquility but began to lose traction when Bucyrus left 14 years ago, will disband after the 2016-17 school year.
What lessons can be learned from the NOL’s breakup? Or is conference contraction and expansion the natural order of high school athletics?
“There are several factors that go into maintaining a stable conference, but I think the two biggest pieces are geography and competitive balance,” Ontario athletic director Chris Miller said. “I’m not talking about enrollment numbers or school district populations. Over time, some school districts get bigger and some get smaller. I mean an athletic program’s ability to compete against the other schools in the league across the board.
“When Ontario moved from the NCC to the NOL, it was a big jump in competition. In our three years in the NOL, I think we have proven we can compete against the bigger schools in the league.”
Ontario has won or shared the boys basketball title each of the three years it has been affiliated with the league. The Warriors also hoisted NOL banners in boys soccer, boys swimming and baseball.
Differences in enrollment figures among NOL member schools have become more pronounced in recent years. The Ohio High School Athletic Association provides enrollment figures every two years to determine which tournament division each of its member schools will be placed in.
The most recent enrollment count, released last spring and updated in August, showed the NOL’s biggest schools — Sandusky, Tiffin Columbian and Norwalk — had more than twice as many males students than Willard, the league’s smallest member.
Enrollment disparity isn’t exclusive to the NOL. The Ohio Cardinal Conference, which includes Mansfield Senior, Madison, Lexington and Clear Fork, has a widening gap in the student populations of its biggest and smallest schools. Not surprisingly the OCC is experiencing growing pains. Orrville, the smallest OCC school, is leaving this fall for the Principals Athletic Conference and will be replaced by Mount Vernon.
“One big challenge we face in the OCC is the disparity in enrollment among some of our member schools,” said OCC commissioner Ron Dessecker, a longtime Orrville resident and 2006 Wayne County Sports Hall of Fame inductee. “In some communities, the jobs have dried up. Parents have to go where the jobs are and their children go with them.
“That is what happened in Orrville. There was a time back in the day when you could quit a job in Orrville at 10 o’clock in the morning and have another job by 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but that isn’t the case any longer.”
Clear Fork, which will be the OCC’s smallest school after Orrville’s departure, announced recently it would accept an invitation to join the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference. The Colts will begin play in the MOAC in the fall of 2017.
Clear Fork had 181 boys and 200 girls in the most recent OHSAA enrollment count. In the previous two-year cycle, Clear Fork had 237 boys and 225 girls.
“I don’t mind playing in the OCC even though we are a smaller team playing against giants,” longtime Clear Fork baseball coach Rusty Staab said. “I know that we will still play Madison and Lexington and some of the other (OCC) schools we have longstanding relationships with.”
Madison athletic director and baseball coach Doug Rickert doesn’t underestimate the importance of relationships when it comes to an athletic conference’s long-term viability. Rickert said high turnover among school administrators and athletic officials had led to an erosion of those relationships.
“Conferences split up because athletic directors don’t last too long anymore,” said Rickert, who became athletic director at his alma mater in 2014. “When ADs lasted a long time, they formed bonds and friendships with other schools. They didn’t want to see anything bad happen to the other schools in the conference because they had formed friendly relationships over a number of years.
“Now the average AD only sticks around four to five years. They aren’t around long enough to form those bonds. The longest-tenured athletic director in the OCC right now is Andy Keller at Wooster and he’s in his fourth year.”
As schools jump from one conference to another, communities are less inclined to make an emotional investment. It’s difficult to develop a rivalry with a school if there is no history between schools or communities.
“That is why it’s so important to find a home and stay there,” Ontario’s Miller said. “That is what we are all hoping to do.”
