Jonathan Alder’s Travis Chany (red) stick checks an opposing DeSales player during a road playoff game this past season. The junior defenseman was given a special mention award for the Mid-Ohio Lacrosse League.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Aleksei Pavloff)
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Every sport in Ohio goes through a stage of evolution.
In Jonathan Alder’s case, its boys lacrosse program is one of the founding members of the Mid-Ohio Lacrosse League (MOLL).
JA athletic director Scott Reule will serve as the league’s president. If the conference continues to grow, an independent commissioner or president will take over those duties.
“On my end, I just wanted to get it started,” he said. “If this thing grows, then yes, we will put someone else in place. The biggest thing was just getting the ball rolling and doing it in the most cost effective way.”
Along with Alder, other member schools include Bexley, Buckeye Valley, Columbus Academy, Granville, New Concord John Glenn, Johnstown and Licking Valley.
Each school is Division II for boys lacrosse.
Due to 2024 spring schedules being set before the formation, no 2024 league champion was crowned.
However, the conference published its first list of all-league recipients.
The Pioneers were well represented in the regular season awards.
Senior attack man Jack Kennedy and junior midfielder Wyatt Clemons were awarded first-team recognition.
Senior defenseman Alex Boggs and junior face-off specialist Mason Curtis earned second team.
Junior defenseman Travis Chany was named special mention, while junior attack man Kaiden Snyder earned a sportsmanship award.
For its unofficial first year, the MOLL selected Columbus Academy’s Ryne Whitt (attack) as its player of the year.
Bexley’s Mike Bassani was named coach of the year.
FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS
Jonathan Alder is the only school in the Central Buckeye Conference that offers lacrosse as a varsity sport. With no dedicated conference, the Pioneers lacked any regular season goals to reach for as far as a league title.
The idea for a dedicated conference came about in a one-on-one meeting between Alder coach Rob Davis and Reule.
“I spoke with him about it a couple years ago,” Davis said. “He really ran with it and reached out to all the other athletic directors.”
The process began at a regular exit meeting between Reule and Davis after the 2022 season.
They agreed to investigate what the process would be to devise a conference.
“At that point, I thought ‘let’s be the front runners in this and go with it,” Reule said.
He spoke with OHSAA executive director Doug Ute and other members of the association.
“I started asking them about the logistics of this process,” he said.
One of the questions was whether a school could participate in two separate conferences.
While feasible, conferences such as the Central Buckeye League (of which Bexley, Academy and Buckeye Valley are members for other sports) have bylaws which member schools must vote for approval if they intend to participate in another league.
Reule reached out to similar-sized schools which mirror JA in enrollment and travel.
“We started reaching out to their AD’s and they said ‘yes, let’s do it.’” he said.
Reule wrote and solidified, with the assistance of other programs, the conference’s bylaws taking inspiration from the CBC’s bylaws.
“I took all those notes and we met in May of 2023 as AD’s with schools that are now a part of the MOLL,” Reule said. “I made a sample schedule of playing each other Tuesday nights of every week for league night.”
The 2025 season will be the MOLL’s first official campaign with all teams getting to play one another.
The team with the best record at the end of the regular season will be crowned the league champion. There will be some stipulations in place in case of a tie, such as head-to-head matchups.
Some schools were unable to play each other this spring due to schedules already being put together ahead of the conference’s finalization.
However, the MOLL was still able to award all-league awards.
“Starting next year, everyone will play everyone, with a seven-game schedule” Reule said. “We weren’t able to play for a conference title this year.”
In past seasons, JA’s goals extended to postseason aspirations with no league title for which to compete.
Now under the MOLL, Davis believes the goals will include vying for a regular season crown.
“It just gives us an opportunity to earn some recognition that some of our other programs can get when they compete in the CBC,” he said. “I think we have a good group of schools in there.”
“I think it just provides excitement,” Reule said. “Not just for us, but for the other schools… we have a conference championship to play for.”
The athletic director said a conference title and awards will give benefits for players down the road as far as recognition for their efforts on the field.
“It provides them more of an opportunity past high school,” Reule said. “I think it will also grow the sport and improve the culture and overall environment of it because they are in an organization.”
Davis said the strength of competition is strong with programs like Columbus Academy, Bexley and Granville. He added that teams like Buckeye Valley, Johnstown and Licking Valley are making strides within their programs, which will only uplift the conference’s strength.
“I think our league will be strong,” Davis said.
“There is a lot of excitement about it,” Reule said.