Change good for student athletes

Things change.
This space had been planned for my thoughts about Jay County High School’s impending conference choice. But that column was scrapped after Jay Schools superintendent Tim Long announced Wednesday morning that he would recommend joining the Allen County Athletic Conference.
The school board is expected to approve that recommendation at its meeting Monday.
I didn’t have strong feelings about which conference Jay County should join. It’s not an easy call. The ACAC and the North Central Conference both have their positives and their negatives. Neither is a perfect fit for the Patriots.
I was leaning slightly toward the ACAC for two main reasons — travel and stability.
The prospect of making regular-season trips to Lafayette for events didn’t sound like much fun. Yes, the North Central Conference had proposed a divisional system to help solve that problem.
However, there is no guarantee such a system would stay in place, especially given that the NCC’s membership may change at any time.
New Castle is considering an invitation to join the Hoosier Heritage Conference, a league that makes sense for it both in terms of travel and competitive balance. It’s believed Huntington North is interested in leaving the NCC for a Fort Wayne-centric conference. And there is talk in Muncie about Central and Southside merging into a single school that would have more than 1,600 students.
The Allen County Athletic Conference certainly has stability issues as well, with the fate of Southern Wells to be decided May 1. There has also been talk of Leo leaving the ACAC to join the Northeast Hoosier Conference, and Garrett having interest in rejoining its former rivals in the Northeast Corner Conference.
But even if those departures happened, the ACAC is far more likely to be able to bring in other east central Indiana schools such as Norwell, Bellmont, Blackford, Eastbrook or Mississinewa. If the North Central Conference loses teams, the travel situation for Jay County would only become worse.
All that being said, I still understand those who believe passionately that the North Central Conference was the better choice.
The NCC has a strong tradition with its 30 state championships in boys basketball. It also would have provided more than enough of a challenge for the Patriots, as some have criticized their overall strength of schedule.
The biggest job incoming athletics director Steve Boozier will have in his first year will be revamping all of the JCHS schedules, something that would have been necessary regardless of which conference was chosen. So let’s take a look at the slate.
(I’m going to use the boys/girls 20-game basketball schedule as a base, although some sports are allowed as many as 28 event dates and some have as few as 14.)
After their eight conference games plus the Allen County Athletic Conference tournament, the Patriots would be left with 10 other games. I’d like to see schools like Winchester and Fort Recovery stay on the JCHS schedule, but because of the size of the schools in the ACAC (five of the eight are in Class 2A and Southern Wells is in Class 1A) it’s going to be important for the Patriots to load up on larger schools in their non-conference games.
They should play half of those games against the Class 3A schools in adjacent counties, giving them Blackford, Bellmont, Delta, Muncie Central, Muncie Southside, Norwell and Yorktown to choose from. The other half should be filled by selecting teams from the following group: Anderson, Fort Wayne South Side, Homestead, Huntington North, Marion, New Castle, Pendleton Heights, Richmond and Wayne.
Some fans will be happy with the ACAC and the prospect of playing a schedule like the one outlined above. Others will think JCHS made a mistake in passing up the opportunity to join the North Central Conference.
Both opinions are valid.
But the most important thing to remember is that from 2001 to 2003 the Patriots played in a five-team Olympic Athletic Conference. From 2004 to 2010 the OAC was just a four-team group. And for the past three seasons JCHS has competed as an independent.
The best part of Jay County’s situation with two offers on the table was that the Patriots were virtually guaranteed to have a viable conference affiliation beginning in 2014-15.
That is a positive change for our student athletes.

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