The merry-go-round is spinning once again.
The Lucas school board voted unanimously earlier this month to accept an invitation to join the Northern 10 Athletic Conference beginning in the fall of 2026.
The move will end Lucas’ on-again, off-again affiliation with the Mid-Buckeye Conference. The school’s current 12-year relationship with the MBC has been tenuous at best, largely because the league doesn’t support a football championship.
Only two of the five teams currently in the MBC, Lucas and Crestline, offer football and both operate as independents when Crestline’s four-year run as a football-only member of the Northwest Central Conference ended after the 2023 season.
Lucas will renew relationships with former North Central Conference rivals Colonel Crawford, Buckeye Central, Bucyrus and Wynford in the N10. Lucas was a member of the NCC from 1998 to 2013 after a pair of earlier stints in the MBC.
The NCC ceased operation after the 2013-14 school year. The N10 began competition the following fall.
In addition to Lucas, the eight-member N10 also extended invitations to Sandusky Bay Conference members Willard, New Riegel, Hopewell-Loudon, Old Fort and Tiffin Calvert.
All six invitees accepted their bids, bringing N10 membership to 14 schools beginning in 2026-27.
The Sandusky Bay Conference, which currently includes 22 members divided into three divisions, is on the verge of splintering.
The 10 schools that make up the SBC’s Lake and Bay Divisions in football — Willard, Margaretta and Woodmore are River Division affiliates in football and Bay Division members in all other sports — intend to break away and form their own conference.
That process began last week when the Sandusky school board voted unanimously to withdraw from the SBC. The others are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks.
The SBC’s small-school River Division already lost Willard, New Riegel, Hopewell-Loudon, Old Fort and Tiffin Calvert to the N10.
Meanwhile, Toledo Area Athletic Conference members Northwood and Ottawa Hills have accepted SBC invitations. The shake-up would leave the new-look SBC with nine schools and three of them don’t play 11-man football — a scheduling nightmare.
While the N10 appears to be the winner in this installment of the never-ending game of musical chairs, the MBC finds itself on life-support. Conference commissioner Stephen Armstrong recently distributed a letter expressing the MBC’s desire to expand.
Expansion is going to be a hard sell, however, as the schools that fit the MBC’s demographic profile and are located in the same geographic footprint already have stable conference homes.
The Firelands Conference has remained unchanged since Black River left in 1993. The Wayne County Athletic League has had the same membership roll since Hillsdale replaced Triway in 1970.
The Knox Morrow Athletic Conference firmed up its foundation with the addition of Loudonville as a full-time member at the start of this school year. The Redbirds had been a member of the MBC and a football-only member of the KMAC.
So where does that leave MBC members Mansfield Christian, St. Peter’s, Crestline and Kidron Central Christian?
“There’s been a lot of conference shifting and expansion and we’re hoping we can get in on that,” Armstrong said. “We set a deadline of May 2 for anyone who is interested (in MBC membership), so we’ll see where we are in terms of responses and go from there.”
Regardless, the MBC will operate as a five-team conference for at least the 2025-26 school year. Beyond that, the conference is in a holding pattern.
“It’s an interesting time,” Armstrong said. “We’re waiting to see what happens and if nobody bites, we’ll just be a small conference.”
The MBC found itself on a similarly slippery slope in the early-2010s when Centerburg, Fredericktown and, eventually, East Knox left for the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference and Johnstown-Monroe, Northridge and Utica joined the Licking County League.
Mansfield Christian, St. Peter’s and Lucas were admitted to the MBC for the 2013-14 school year. Kidron Central Christian and Crestline came on board in 2015.
“The conference has been resilient over the years,” Armstrong said. “There’s always hope and we are clinging to that hope.”