NEWARK — The Licking County League is splitting up.
Lakewood (Hebron), Newark Catholic, Northridge (Johnstown) and Utica notified league officials Tuesday, Nov. 10, of their plans to leave the LCL and form a new league — a move driven by the enrollment gap that has been the league’s running argument for years.
LCL commissioner Ron Bowman confirmed via text-
“Pending a vote by the school boards at Lakewood, Newark Catholic, Northridge and Utica, those schools will leave the Licking County League beginning with the 2028-29 school year. They will become charter members of a new league of like size schools. The LCL will become an eight-team league which will continue looking at future expansion.”
Utica athletic director Howard Hill said details on the new league will be provided soon. No name, no other members, and no schedule have been announced yet
Who stays
Granville, Heath, Johnstown, Licking Heights, Licking Valley, Mount Vernon, Watkins Memorial and Zanesville will remain in the LCL.
All four departing schools are members of the league’s Cardinal Division, the smaller-school division. The LCL re-formed for the 2013-14 school year with 10 Licking County schools, and Zanesville was added in 2020 and Mount Vernon in 2024.
Why now: size, and the crossover games
The split has been building since the spring. Bowman told the Newark Advocate in October that talks began in May or June, with the smaller schools unhappy about competitive balance.
Bowman said-
“We started talking in May or June that some schools were unhappy. We talked basically all summer about how we could rectify the problem. I am being totally honest with you; nothing has been finalized in any shape or form. As of right now, we are still a solid 12-team league, but there are also some of the smaller schools that — again, for the idea of competitive balance — are talking about, if expansion doesn’t solve the problem, maybe we need to look at another option.”
The gap is a growth story. Licking Heights went from one of the smallest schools in the league during the 1980s to now the biggest, and Watkins Memorial, Granville and Johnstown have also had significant enrollment increases over the last three decades, while the four departing schools stayed small.
The flashpoint has been the crossover games. The league split its largest and smallest schools into the Buckeye and Cardinal divisions, and for scheduling reasons teams were required to play schools from the opposite division — two games at first, now one, in Weeks 4 and 5 of the football season. This season, all six mandatory Week 5 crossover games were won by the bigger Buckeye schools.
Bowman said-
“That highlights the football issue,” Bowman said. “We have teams that put 25 or 30 kids out there on Friday night, and those kids have to play both ways for 48 minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, we have people that can put 50 and 60 kids out there on Friday night. The issue becomes safety as well as fatigue.”
What the league tried first
The LCL tried to hold itself together. The additions of Zanesville and Mount Vernon, and the move of Lakewood from the Buckeye to the Cardinal Division, were attempts to keep the playing field level. Beginning in the 2027-28 school year, mandatory crossovers were eliminated for the other traditional team sports such as basketball and baseball.
Bowman said-
“We’ve looked at so many different options to try to find a way to satisfy everybody and be able to hold the league together,” Bowman said. He has been commissioner since 2018 and was previously a long-time coach at multiple member schools.
Bowman also confirmed schools have shown interest in joining the LCL within the last six months, though the league has made no formal invitations since Mount Vernon began play in the 2024-25 school year.
What happens next
The departure is pending votes by the four school boards. One wrinkle to watch: the league’s bylaws require two full school years’ notice for a departure, and the Advocate reported in October that the earliest a new league could begin play under that rule was 2029-30 — unless 75 percent of the remaining LCL schools vote to release the departing schools sooner. Bowman’s 2028-29 date is a year earlier than that, so the formal process appears to be further along than the public notice, or a release vote is in play.
The league was re-established for 2013-14 following a breakup nearly 25 years earlier, in hopes of helping attendance by reigniting old rivalries and saving money and time with shorter travel distances. Thirteen years later, the same pressures that broke it apart the first time — size and competitive balance — have split it again.
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