Listening to a story from a local about calling her school board member to complain about the schism in the GWOC I marvelled when the school board member said she knew nothing about the split. http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/split-decision-thin... / as in Indiana we have school board members seeking election and then meddling in coaching firings based on their kids playing time. It was refreshing to hear that the local GWOC board member had no idea of the withdrawl and MAY be letting the AD and Administrators do their jobs.

From a recruiting and observation standpoint I was interested in how schools align and what was behind the schism as evaluating players vs other players is an interesting part of attending certain games.. . I delved into it and found it quite interesting and compelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OHSAA_Southwest_Region_athl...

The old WOL and SWBL have radically changed in the almost 60 years since my Pops coached at Wayne HS in a very young Huber Heights. The realignments are fascinating and BAers like Joe McK from Stebbins along with a certain person that eludes NN detection may have some input to the conversation. The mega conferences in Ohio that have emerged in all the cities and by extension into the smaller school perplex me as I do not understand the benefits vs the old 8-10 team alliances. Fascinating, thought provoking reading and analysis. The mega conferences in Cincy and Columbus and the Southwest Ohio amalgamation of Catholic schools I also found compelling. Compared to Carmel, Ben Davis, Warren and Pike in IN that have 5000 students I thought the school enrollments in Ohio were interesting that they count boys/girls and the "big" schools are not really that big by standards over here. Muncie Central at 900 students is in the same class as 90 school with larger enrollments and 40 with 2-5 times their numbers.

Cleveland/Akron/Canton area had a pretty massive realignment a couple years ago.

As Alan said, football really drives it as well as boy's basketball to a lesser extent. Travel for other sports definitely brought up, but doesn't seem to really do much.

At the top level there has been consolidation to form power conferences. In NW there was the Toledo City league which had played for 90 years but competitive disparaties began to emerge between the affluent catholic schools and the public schools in the 70's. In 2010 the decision was made by the catholic schools that it was time to put together a power conference with the big publics in the area Oregon, Fremont, Findlay, Lima plus the largest public school in the city league Whitmer. 10 school conference and since that time not a deletion or addition to it because its the best possible conference for everyone involved. It reminds me of the ACC with all the private schools in it plus a few big outlier public schools. Lima is the Florida State of the conference as a traditional elite football power. They aren't technically in NW Ohio but because they are on I-75 which is the lifeblood of NW Ohio they can conveniently hop on a bus and be in the Toledo metro within an hour. Findlay is the Louisville of the conference which had played in many leagues over the years as a dominant basketball school with mediocre football. They were in CUSA type conferences until the 90's when they joined the Great Lakes League which was like a Big East with most of the significant NW Ohio D1 & D2 non city league schools in it. Of course with Findlay's arrival to a conference that was always the cue for the weaker D2 schools to exit stage left for fear of Findlay basketball and Olympic sports. The last incarnation of the GLL was the Greater Buckeye League with Findlay, Fremont, Lima, Marion, Napoleon and Sandusky from 2003-2011. Napoleon was a smaller school that always punched above its weight in athletics because of the strong community based area. Sandusky had enrollment declines so they dropped to the mid major Sandusky Bay conference. Marion is in the more regional mid-ohio athletic conference. The city schools of the industrial towns have tended in recent years to move down to mid major leagues to save on travel. The wealthy growing suburban type schools have moved up to be more competitive. Findlay's historical situation is different as it benefited in the new economy as a logistics hub and has tripled in size since WWII. For this reason its more similar to a Columbus suburb and they usually put Dublin or one the other big suburban Columbus schools on the schedule since the 90's to maximize playoff points. The answer is it depends on institutional objectives but there is natural hierarchy that exists. Lima Senior, Findlay and Toledo Whitmer are never going to back down from elite D1 competition. They would play independent (which they did) before that happens.

Three Rivers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Rivers_Athletic_Confe...

Greater Buckeye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Buckeye_Conference

Borna, I don't know much about the GWOC split other than what has appeared in the Dayton Daily News about the plans by the smaller schools to form their own 10 team league sans Trotwood. These are mostly former Greater Miami Valley Conference schools with the exception of Xenia and Stebbins. My alma mater has bounced around in terms of league affiliations since leaving the old WOL decades ago.

Here in central Ohio, I'm a bit more familiar with what is happening. The Ohio Capital Conference member schools had a re-alignment vote scheduled for 2/7, but the meeting was postponed due to weather. The new divisions would take effect with the 2020/21 school year and be in place for four years. OCC by-laws call for re-alignment when school enrollments have a specific differential from top to bottom within a division. The league has made exceptions for geography or specific school/school district wishes.

The stated benefit is competitive balance across sports. And, in some cases an argument has been made about lowering travel/transportation costs. One drawback is the inability to maintain or build rivalries.

I don't think that school board members have any direct involvement here in Dublin, but they do set policies around attendance zones and intra-district student transfers which impact enrollments significantly. Current enrollments have Coffman #3 in the OCC, Jerome at #14 and Scioto at #27. Coffman's OHSAA enrollment for the top three grades for boys/girls is 747/658, Jerome is 617/636 and Scioto is 484/494.

Ohio has over 800 high schools, and even with the consolidation movement of the 60’s has maintained (largely) the model of public schools as laid out in the Nortwest Ordinance of 1787.

And I to II in basketball

Zanesville and several current OCC schools are considering creating a new league. These include OCC members Newark, Lancaster, Reynoldsburg, Canal Winchester and Groveport. Other schools being considered include Teays Valley, Logan and Mt. Vernon.

A fourth Olentangy high school might force the OCC to realign sooner than they had hoped for.

Olentangy Berlin opens this fall and will join the OCC Cardinal which has seven teams right now.

The new OCC alignment to be voted on shortly includes a division with Central Crossing, Groveport, Lancaster, Newark, Pickerington Central and Reynoldsburg.

Consolidation in Athens took place in the late 60s. Athens, The Plains and Chancey became one district. Even with that, we still have 5 school districts in a county of 65,000. 5 superintendents, 5 treasurers, 5 transportation supervisors, etc. Lots of duplication of services. Combine that with the fact that Athens folks pay twice the milage of the other four districts and you have an unfair tax burden.

Every adult knows there has been a decline in the industrial towns of the Midwest. Townships cutting into the tax base isn't understood very well outside of those from the region. Another factor is the existence of catholic schools in those communities. Lima has a catholic high school to compete with the public high school where Findlay does not. Findlay which had absolutely zero suburbs in 1960 and is put forward as a model community for the region the neighboring townships have moved up to D4 and D5 enrollments which together have 50% of Findlay's enrollment. 56,000 live in Findlay's zip code while the census city population is 41,000. In this case the homes built in the township tract are going for 200k-250k while in the city their putting in 500k+ homes in the high end neighborhoods. Its not a suburban flight but people coming into town from rural areas are preferring the smaller township high school with its lower taxes, easier schools and affordability. Where the central city is in real decline like in Lima 37,000 of 87,000 of its zip code live in the central city. There is where the township schools have long passed the city school in quality. The HS enrollment decline of the small cities has accelerated with smaller family sizes. Findlay this past year barely qualified as D1 this year with the smallest enrollment of 72 D1 schools. With the township enrollments included they would be 18th. Lima Senior who once had more students than Findlay is now 400 students less and is danger of dropping down to DIII.

http://thecourier.com/local-sports/2017/04/07/football-co... /

As a parent of a kid in the Zanesville City School system, I am not in favor of that. We need a league with Maysville, Tri-Valley, Newark, Sheridan, Dover and New Philly. Tri-Valley needs out of the MVL and Zanesville has to come to grips with the fact that the district is shrinking and not act like they are one of the big boys anymore.

I'm not sure what the rules concerning consolidation in Ohio were but most of it happened in the 60s. Here, there used to be an eight-school Wyandot County League before consolidation. Four of those schools merged into Upper Sandusky's district. Others combined (with schools in neighboring counties) to form Mohawk, Riverdale and Wynford.

There still remains many very small school districts. There are some school districts around here that graduate 25-40 kids a year. Some of them, like Vanlue, even play football, though others like New Riegel are non-football schools. Interestingly, just a couple years ago there was a consolidation of Bettsville (the Bobcats), which had a graduating class of 12 in its final year, into the Old Fort district. There was discussion of Arcadia and Vanlue merging but that didn't work out.

It is crazy to see all the old towns that used to have schools. Personally always laughed at my dad's hometown games because they still announce the scores for the Cooney Wildcats and New Berlin. Kunkle had a nice team too back in the day......

But in all seriousness, NW Ohio got messed up a few years ago because of St. Wendelin not having a football team the one year and then the issues with Toledo Public set off a new chain of realignment.