(2-18-26) Southern Wells last night at a regularly scheduled Board meeting tabled an item to accept an offer from the Mid-Eastern Conference to join the athletic conference.

Video of Southern Wells School board meeting

Related:

According to a media source below—-

Lots of misinformation was spread during last night’s board meeting at Southern Wells. Originally, they were supposed to vote for the invitation in the MEC last night. But apparently the ACAC’s threat to potentially kick them out forced the board to discuss and ultimately decided to postpone it indefinitely.

The board claims that the ACAC can’t kick them out because it’s not stated in the bylaws. It was not an easy board meeting for everyone there. 

Interestingly their departing superintendent is Trent Lehman (he will be heading to Columbia City aka WCCS next school year). He compared this situation to his alma mater’s time in the NEIAC. DeKalb, Bellmont, East Noble, and Homestead mocked them back in the late 80s as “Sad Adams”. He was a junior at that time, when they transitioned to the ACAC, they benefitted from that. He also referenced Speedway when they were in their old conference that mostly consisted of 4A schools.

Just want to add clarity. The ACAC has stated they are NOT actively trying to remove Southern Wells. They are stating that Southern Wells needs to stay in the ACAC or go to the MEC. They are simply drawing the line in the sand. Southern Wells folks are painting this as Southern Wells vs the ACAC, but I think that’s where the misinformation is really coming from.

Southern Wells officials were very responsive to our request in an email reply to SSN on the above comments-

Andrew Pursifull – Southern Wells School Board of Trustees President

Thanks for reaching out.

We just felt that the way the ACAC handled the situation wasn’t very diplomatic.  While the other conference members certainly have valid concerns about SW having dual membership, the letter stating they would move to exclude SW from the ACAC was sent without many, or any conversations about how SW could alleviate or mitigate their concerns.  In my own opinion it came off as a bit of a bullying tactic to force our hand.  I think our administration provided solutions that could address the concerns of the other members of the ACAC.  Our hope is that there can be some further discussion about what dual membership for SW could look like and how SW could meet the requirements of both conferences.  

Trent M. Lehman – Superintendent of Southern Wells Community Schools

Understand that I didn’t  agree with the Sad Adams comments.  In fact, we actually won the NEIAC Boys Basketball  Conference Tournament that last year we were in it for the first and only time in school’s history.  We also consistently competed well in baseball.  But ultimately, it was a good conference move for SA going from the NEIAC to the ACAC, as well as, when Speedway left the Mid State for the West Central Conference. My main point was stating that I have experienced positive conference changes in the past and used those as the examples.  They are not direct comparisons since no two situations/circumstances are the same. 

I do think that being in both conferences, ACAC and the MEC,  is a good and interesting option for Southern Wells (SW).  The hope was that the ACAC would say as long you meet the obligations  of the ACAC, which the only one we see in the by-laws is fielding football and basketball ,  then what you do with your out of conference schedule is your business, not ours.  I don’t believe it is a good practice for conferences to concern themselves with what their conference teams do outside of their conference as long as they are meeting the standards of the conference,  which we have been and plan to continue doing.  We are seeking further explanation as to why the ACAC chose to threaten to vote us out of the conference if we choose to join the MEC and also stay in the ACAC.