Board votes to join ACAC

The Patriots have a conference home.
Jay School Board voted unanimously Monday to accept an invitation for Jay County High School to join the Allen County Athletic Conference.
JCHS was invited to join the ACAC in March, about six weeks after receiving an invitation to join the North Central Conference.
“As I looked at things, I thought with travel and everything else that goes into it … who we matched up with better I thought was the ACAC,” said Jay Schools Superintendent Tim Long during a break in the meeting. “There aren’t going to be any losers in this situation as far as I’m concerned. I think being in a conference is a good thing. I think there are a lot of good people in those schools in the ACAC.”
The Allen County Athletic Conference is currently made up of South Adams, Southern Wells, Adams Central, Bluffton, Heritage, Woodlan, Leo and Garrett, with a vote on the future of Southern Wells as a member scheduled for May 1. Jay County will compete for one more season as an independent before entering the league for the 2014-15 school year.
Bluffton athletics director and ACAC president Steve Thompson could not be reached for comment this morning, but previously said inviting Jay County “came down to trying to make our conference better.
“Jay County would strengthen our conference,” he added. “Even though they’re a lot bigger than a lot of our schools, their community fits nicely with the schools that are in the ACAC.”
The vote came in front of a full meeting room at Jay Schools’ central office, and followed a few comments from members of the public.
Alan Dirksen and Derek Rodgers, both JCHS graduates and Jay County residents, spoke against joining the ACAC and suggested the school board delay its decision. Dirksen invoked the names of former Portland and Jay County athletics director Harold Schutz and former JCHS athlete Mark Hardwick during his comments, and said he felt the Allen County Athletic Conference would not offer the level of competition that would help Jay County improve.
“If you ask any good coach, he will tell you if you play better competition, you will eventually get better,” Dirksen said. “Academically … it would be like us teaching our high schoolers eighth-grade math and English all through high school so that they get good grades. When the SAT comes around, they’re not going to know anything. So I just want you to keep that in mind, because if we play smaller schools all throughout the year, come tournament time we go to a 4A sectional in any sport, the kids are not going to be prepared to play against the better teams.”
Jason Rice, a 1992 JCHS graduate and a local pastor, spoke in favor of joining the Allen County Athletic Conference. He recited a list of sectional championships won by ACAC schools in a variety of sports, noting that talent is not always based on enrollment numbers.
“I think there is a huge misconception that a small school does not equate to a level of talent,” he said, noting Jay County’s 1-6 football record against Allen County Athletic Conference schools over the last decade. “I think we fit much better in the ACAC.”
Following the public comment session three school board members also spoke about the conference decision, with both Mike Shannon and board president Greg Wellman saying the input they received from constituents was split between the ACAC and NCC. Larry Paxson pointed out that it was important to consider the middle schools, whose schedules would also be affected by the conference choice.
A decision had not been clear to him, Wellman said, until Sunday evening, but that he took into consideration such priorities as faith, family, community and education. He then recommended that the board approve Long’s recommendation to join the ACAC, which it did unanimously.
The vote brought to an end a conference search that began in 1999, when Harrison, McCutcheon, Brownsburg, Hamilton Southeastern and Noblesville announced they would leave the Olympic Athletic Conference. That move, which took effect in 2001, left the OAC with just five teams.
The Olympic Athletic Conference slipped to four teams when Huntington North departed for the NCC in 2004, and it folded after Anderson Highland merged with Anderson in 2010.
Connersville will join the Eastern Indiana Conference next year, leaving Muncie Southside as the only remaining OAC school that has not found a conference home.


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