Leo, Huntington North selected

OSSIAN — The Patriots made their conference choice. Now the two leagues that were courting them will each be losing a team.
Leo and Huntington North were selected Wednesday to join six Northeast Hoosier Conference schools to form a new league beginning in the 2015-16 school year.
They will join Bellmont, Norwell, New Haven, Columbia City, DeKalb and East Noble in a yet-to-be-named conference. The NHC, which currently also includes Homestead and Carroll, announced in April that it would disband following the 2014-15 school year.
“Going through this process we had asked people to present on a number of things. Some of those included their demographics, sports they offered, facilities, enrollment, academics,” said Norwell principal and NHC president Mark Misch. “All those factors played a role in selecting those two schools. We felt Huntington North and Leo were more similar in those areas than the other two schools that had presented to us.”
Leo will leave the Allen County Athletic Conference, while Huntington North departs the North Central Conference. Jay County High School had invitations from both leagues, and the Jay School Board voted in April to accept the invitation from the ACAC.
Angola, Concordia, Huntington North and Leo made presentations May 29 in hopes of joining the “NHC six” in a new conference. The group was not interested in Jay County as a potential member because of travel considerations.
“I think the East Noble, DeKalb drive to Jay County was a big deterrent,” said Misch, noting that Norwell, Bellmont, New Haven, Columbia City, DeKalb and East Noble were committed to staying together. “I don’t think it was anything about Jay County or what they bring to the table, it was just a geographic issue for our northern schools.”
Since Jay County accepted its invitation to join the Allen County Athletic Conference, two schools have now announced their departures. Garrett decided in May that it would leave the group to re-join the Northeast Corner Conference in 2014-15.
The recent moves mean the ACAC, which currently includes South Adams, Southern Wells, Adams Central, Bluffton, Heritage, Woodlan, Leo and Garrett, will be an eight-team conference when Jay County joins for the 2014-15 school year. Barring any further changes, it would then drop to seven teams when Leo leaves in 2015-16.
Leo’s departure will leave Jay County as by far the largest school in the ACAC at 1,113 students. Heritage is next at 658, while Leo has 932.
The North Central Conference is currently an eight-team group that had planned to expand to 12 teams for the 2014-15 school year. Lafayette-area schools Jefferson, Harrison and McCutcheon have accepted invitations to join the NCC, but the departure of Huntington North would leave the league with 10 teams. Also, New Castle is expected to decide at its Monday school board meeting whether it will stay in the NCC or accept an invitation to join the Hoosier Heritage Conference.
When Jay County administrators were researching conferences in order to make their decision, they expected more changes were on the way.
“We knew that in both cases, the conference we joined probably would be different than the conference we competed in two years down the road,” said JCHS principal Phil Ford. “So, neither of those changes were a shock to us. We anticipated those as at least being possibilities when we made that decision.”
One of the chief concerns cited by Jay Schools officials when choosing the Allen County Athletic Conference over the North Central Conference was driving distance.
With the departure of Garrett (79 miles) and Leo, the furthest school from Jay County in the ACAC will be Woodlan at 59 miles. Four of the schools in the group are a distance of 30 miles or fewer.
The average distance from JCHS to the schools currently committed to being in the North Central Conference is 69 miles. Average enrollment in the NCC is 1,369, with Muncie Central (915) as the smallest school and Jefferson (1,935) as the largest.[[In-content Ad]]