(9-4-23) On Friday Delphos St. John’s announced that they would remain in the Midwest Athletic Conference (MAC) and turned down an invitation to join the Northwest Conference (NWC). During the NWC search another MAC school flatly said no to the NWC offer without doing any serious background work on the possibility.

Three schools that were willing to join the NWC:

Lima Central Catholic – an independent for over 10 years since the NWC asked them to leave

Liberty-Benton – who is (still) searching for a new conference home after agreeing to leave the Blanchard Valley Conference (BVC) a couple of years ago

Ft. Loramie – wants to join as a football only member, they became a football independent after they were left out of two conferences after a regrouping of members

The NWC said ‘no thank you‘ to all three schools and decided to offer Delphos St. John’s a spot in the conference.

So is a slow death coming to the NWC?

Over the years other conferences at both the high school and college ranks have had to make moves on conference changes—

Northern Ohio League commissioner Jim Yeager said–

“We’re still a solid league of seven. We’re like a lot of leagues right now, just kind of sitting back and waiting to see what dominoes fall and where.”

You snooze…you lose… shortly after that comment — The Northern Ohio League (NOL) that began competition in 1944 and would disband in 2017 after six of its seven members joined the Sandusky Bay Conference.[

Words of wisdom in athletic conference changes- a college AD told me one time…

“I just don’t want to be the last guy in the room to turn out the light.”

Although the above quote was from over 10 years ago…the quote holds true today…the Pac-12 Conference is down to two members. Those two institutions are Oregon State and Washington State.

I asked a HS Athletic Conference Commissioner about some rumors, his reply-

“I have no comment but that is correct. Lots of talking behind the scenes.”

Listen to the podcast from 2011 with Ron Williams who was the LCC AD at the time the NWC asked the T-Birds to step away from NWC Membership.

WROK, Rockford, Illinois Podcast (12-31-2011)-

Lima (Ohio) Central Catholic AD Ron Williams talks about the Private vs Public issue LCC faced this year

Now we all wait to see what is next for the NWC>