I was on vacation last week when I got the word that North Union would be switching from the Mid Ohio Athletic Conference to the Central Buckeye Conference.
I had heard rumors of such a move for the past few months, but as of the start of the summer, nothing concrete had come from those smoke signals.
The move is just another example of something that Mr. Meyers, my junior high science teacher, told me many years ago.
“The only thing constant is change,” he said.
NU’s switch to a new conference comes, however, after many years (more than 25 to be exact) as an affiliate of the MOAC.
Prior to that, Wildcat squads had competed in the old Central Buckeye League and before that, when I was in school, in the Mid Ohio Conference (MOC).
North Union competed well in football and track and field in the MOC, but had trouble in some sports during its days in the CBL.
Girls basketball and softball were fine in the years prior to the creation of the MOAC. Football and some other sports, though, found the sledding pretty tough.
The Central Buckeye League was an amalgamation of schools with different dynamics. It featured smaller schools such as NU, West Jefferson, Grandview, Columbus Academy, and Jonathan Alder and larger schools like Marysville, Olentangy, Bexley and Dublin (when there was only one Dublin High School).
There was a wide-range of financial and somewhat cultural differences between the various teams and it just never seemed to be a good fit for North Union.
The MOAC was created in the early 1990s and put NU into a conference that featured schools more its size. It provided competition with nearby Marion and Morrow county schools that sparked fierce rivalries.
The MOAC went along smoothly for more than two decades before it began to change.
The first real revisions were the additions of Fairbanks and Jonathan Alder.
I thought, great, we’ve got three of our five schools in the same conference. That will make for some pretty easy matchups, at least for our coverage.
The Panthers’ move to the MOAC from the Northwest Central Conference wasn’t quite as successful as hoped as they were among the smallest schools in the circuit. Fairbanks has since switched to the more equitable Ohio Heritage Conference.
Jonathan Alder has moved to the CBC and will once again become a league rival to North Union once the Wildcats make the switch sometime between 2018 and 2020.
The MOAC made additional changes over the years. Elgin, North Union’s next-door neighbor in Marion County, left while other teams such as Galion, East Knox and Fredericktown came into the fold.
NU athletic director Nick Haajar told sports writer Sam Dillon last week that the MOAC appears to be heading in a more easterly direction. That would have made travel for Wildcat teams difficult.
The switch to the CBC will put North Union in with not only JA, but teams such as Benjamin Logan and Indian Lake, schools that aren’t all that difficult of a drive.
Hopefully, the CBC will be a circuit in which Wildcat teams can successfully compete.
It just seems sad that all of those close Marion County conference rivalries will be going by the wayside.