ONTARIO, Ohio — Ontario administrators didn’t want to be left without a seat when the music stopped playing in the ongoing game of musical chairs that is athletic conference affiliation.
The Ontario school board on Tuesday unanimously approved a move to the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference effective for the 2017-18 school year, just hours after MOAC officials extended Ontario an invitation in an effort to stabilize a conference that will lose 10 of its 16 current members within the next two years.
Clear Fork is expected to become the MOAC’s eighth member, pending board approval later this week. Clear Fork has had an offer on the table since November.
“The Clear Fork school board will put it to a vote and from every indication we’ve received they will join,” MOAC commissioner Terry Williams said. “We are looking at a minimum of eight teams and 10 is a possibility, but we’re not going to rush to any decision.”
The MOAC was founded for the start of the 1990-91 school year as a 10-team, two-division league. It expanded to 16 teams by 2014, with two eight-team divisions.
“We found the two eight-team division set-up was not as cohesive,” Williams said.
Seven of the eight teams in the MOAC’s Blue Division announced last November that they would split away from the MOAC to form the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference, along with Danville of the Mid-Buckeye Conference. The remaining MOAC Blue Division team, Marion Elgin, is headed for the Northwest Central Conference. Current MOAC Red Division members Jonathan Alder and Fairbanks already have announced their intentions to leave for the Central Buckeye Conference and Ohio Heritage Conference, respectively.
That leaves Galion (Crawford County) Marion Harding, Marion Pleasant and River Valley (Marion County), Buckeye Valley (Delaware County) and North Union (Union County) as the remaining MOAC members. Administrators from those six schools announced their intention to stick together in a press release late last month.
Ontario is making the jump out of necessity. The Warriors are currently a member of the Northern Ohio League.
“We were informed that the NOL would not exist in 2017-18. We essentially had one year that we knew we would have a conference home,” Ontario athletic director Chris Miller said Tuesday morning. “In an effort not to be an independent, which is certainly not where anybody wants to be, we started looking.
“We had conversations involving us being a branch of the Northern Ohio League-Sandusky Bay Conference merger that didn’t work out and we had conversations about starting a new league in this area that didn’t work out.”
The Sandusky Bay Conference will expand from its current seven-team format to 15 teams in two divisions beginning in 2016-17 with additional expansion to a three-division mega-conference on the horizon. Most of the current NOL schools will be absorbed by the SBC.
The one notable exception is Shelby, which is still weighing its options. The Whippets have had meetings with the MOAC and the Ohio Cardinal Conference.
The OCC already is losing Orrville to the Principal’s Athletic Conference and, in all likelihood, Clear Fork to the MOAC. The six remaining member schools are scattered across Richland, Ashland, Wayne and Holmes counties.
“Right now it is an open door and we’re waiting to see who comes through. You have to find a willing partner,” OCC commissioner Ron Dessecker said. “We’ll be sad to see Orrville and Clear Fork go but we understand nothing lasts forever.
“If you throw a stone into a pond, it makes ripples all the way to the shore. That is how all of this (conference realignment) is. You could have one team change conference in the northwest part of the state and you would see the repercussions all the way to the Ohio River.”
