Arsenal Tech leaves NCC
Jul. 7—INDIANAPOLIS — Arsenal Technical High School will leave the North Central Conference at the end of the 2022 — 23 prep sports season. The school's sports teams will continue to play games as an NCC-member school through June 1, 2023.
The NCC currently consists of Tech, Anderson, Harrison (West Lafayette), Kokomo, Lafayette Jeff, Logansport, Marion, Lafayette McCutcheon, Muncie Central, and Richmond.
"We are very proud to have represented IPS and the city of Indianapolis in one of the state's top sports conferences and to have competed against other student-athletes across the state," Tech Principal Corye Franklin said in a Wednesday press release from Indianapolis Public Schools.
This move will allow Arsenal Tech to seek out new conference affiliations that will allow for games closer to Indianapolis, drastically cutting down on travel time to and from games.
"Finding a centrally-located conference would be more conducive to the lives of our student-athletes by reducing long bus rides to out-of-town games that often end late on school nights," said Franklin, who believes there are plenty of opportunities to develop rivalries against schools in Central Indiana. "It will also allow for more families, alumni, and staff to attend games."
Geography may have been the primary factor, but it was not the only issue the school's athletic program has had in recent years.
Anderson Athletic Director Steve Schindler said Tech often had problems fielding full teams and, at times, participated in Indianapolis city tournaments rather than NCC events when the schedules were in conflict.
"There's been some issues with them making it to locations, fielding teams, and things like that," Schindler said. "I knew there were some issues from that standpoint, even a lot of times when we would have our conference meets, sometimes they would conflict with their city meets down in Indianapolis. They would go to the city meets in Indianapolis before the conference meets."
Even after leaving the conference, Arsenal Tech will still compete against schools in the NCC but much less frequently, said Franklin.
Arsenal Tech was a founding member of the NCC in 1926 and participated in the NCC until it joined the Indianapolis Public Schools Athletic Conference in 1960. Arsenal Tech returned to the NCC in 2015.
Schindler says the remaining member schools are likely to remain in the NCC, with the current divisional setup helping alleviate travel concerns.
"We've tried to set everything up with the east-west divisions," he said. "It's really helped out with some of those concerns in that, you basically play within your division and the only times you really travel is with football and basketball."
Contact Rob Hunt at rob.hunt@heraldbulletin.com or 765-640-4886.
