Triad High School football players Diego Hernandez (22) and Hunter Thompson (24) make a tackle during a 2021 game. Pictured in the background is Michael Warner (50). Triad’s athletic director would like to see the Ohio Heritage Conference go through realignment to more along the lines of student enrollment, instead of the current geographical set-up. (Journal-Tribune photo by Tim Miller)
The Ohio Heritage Conference has been long referred to by some to be among one of the top smaller-school conferences in the state of Ohio.
Each year, football teams from the circuit earn state-playoff berths, as both Fairbanks and Triad have done in the past.
Boys and girls basketball have been strong, along with baseball, softball, volleyball and track and field.
Triad High School athletic director Logan Dunn, however, feels some changes need to be made.
“We need to have more competitive balance in the conference,” Dunn told the Journal-Tribune during a recent interview. “I think it needs to be divided by student enrollment, instead of geography.”
The OHC is currently and has been for a number of years, divided into North and South Divisions.
The North currently includes Fairbanks, Triad, Mechanicsburg, West Jefferson, Northeastern and West Liberty-Salem.
Greeneview, Greenon, Springfield Catholic Central, Cedarville, Southeastern and Madison Plains comprise the South Division.
Dunn noted enrollment figures for each school in the conference show a disparity.
For instance, Triad – with a grades 9-12 enrollment of 253 – is in the same division as West Liberty, which has 353, and Fairbanks, which stands at 337.
Those numbers, as provided by Dunn, were based on the 2020-2021 Ohio Department of Education report that was released in October of last year.
The conference’s bylaws state realignment will be reviewed by the schools’ athletic directors and the OHC Board of Control every four years.
However, Dunn said the issue has never been addressed.
Competitive balance is a driving factor in Dunn’s idea for realignment.
His figures show bigger schools such as West Liberty, Mechanicsburg, Fairbanks and West Jefferson have an overall sports winning figure of between 62 and 71% over the past few years.
Smaller schools range from Southeastern’s 47% all the way down to Triad’s 21%.
“A lot of schools in our conference just aren’t competitive in sports under the current alignment,” said the Cardinal AD.
Dunn is proposing the conference be divided into Red and Blue Divisions.
The Blue would include Mechanicsburg, West Jefferson, Greeneview, Fairbanks, West Liberty-Salem and Greenon.
The Red Division would be comprised of Catholic Central, Cedarville, Triad, Southeastern, Northeastern and Madison Plains.
“We wouldn’t be adding any new schools,” said Dunn.
The second-year Triad athletic director said the pros of realignment would greatly outnumber the one con, which is travel.
“The pros would include more competitive games in the conference, which would increase revenue,” he said.
“I feel you would also have increased participation and higher student engagement, which would include bigger student sections and additional school pride.”
Dunn also said a more competitive balance could lead to coaches wanting to stay longer at their school, along with increased parental and community support to improve the culture of any given area.
Whether or not the realignment will ever be realized remains to be seen.
“I’d like for those of us in the conference to look at this sometime this year,” said Dunn, who added that middle school teams in the conference would remain in divisions based on geography under his proposal.
“The 2023-2024 school year would ideally be the first year we could have a new alignment.”