Detroit Catholic League adds five schools from Toledo, relieving headaches on all sides

The Detroit Catholic League, the largest Catholic High School athletic league in the country, just got bigger.

And it invaded Ohio to do it.

Toledo Central Catholic, Notre Dame Academy, St. Francis de Sales, St. John’s Jesuit and St. Ursula Academy all were accepted into the Detroit Catholic League as full members on Tuesday and they will begin competition in the 2023-24 academic year.

Notre Dame Academy and St. Ursula are all-girl schools while St. Francis and St. John’s Jesuit are all-boys schools. Central Catholic is the only co-ed institution.

This caps a 10-year effort by Vic Michaels, the director of athletics for the Detroit Catholic League, to get these Catholic schools into the now 32-school league.

The driving force behind the Toledo schools’ interest in joining the Catholic League was that four public schools in the Three Rivers Athletic Conference said they were leaving to join the Northern Lakes League and the Catholic schools would not be joining them.

FROM 2021: Catholic League may add Toledo schools soon. Here's why it's a match made in heaven

One of the biggest obstacle to the Toledo teams joining the league was the time it would take driving to Michigan schools.

“As we all came together to evaluate this opportunity we did look at the travel that would have been involved had we stayed independent or gone with the Catholic High School League,” said Mary Werner, president of St. Ursula. “We, like all these other schools, are committed to serving our student athletes and our parents and we will work together on the transportation issues.

“Our athletes have traveled all across the state anyway as it is and we’re just going a little in the opposite direction to Detroit.”

Michaels said he did MapQuest searches for the Toledo schools to all 27 Catholic League member schools. He said the longest trip was one hour, 15 minuets. Other than that, the other trips were 55 minutes or less.

Other opportunities the Toledo schools investigated were joining leagues in Cleveland or Columbus.

Last spring, St. Francis athletic director Justin Edgell said the average trip to Cleveland was one hour, 45 minutes and the average trip to Columbus was 2½ hours.

The main beneficiary for this was football. This will add three quality teams to the Central Division and lessen the burden of scheduling nonconference games and hopefully eliminate the need to schedule ridiculously one-sided games with teams from Canada.

“I can’t tell you how stressful it is trying to schedule high school football gamers, and I know we’re not the only ones,” said Novi Detroit Catholic Central athletic director Aaron Babicz. “It sounds like in 2023 we’ll only need an opener and a bye week game and I can’t tell you how elated I am about that.

“This is as opposed to filling five games a season. I might still have some hair left if this would have happened earlier.”

This move will strengthen many girls sports in the league by adding competitive teams.

“I don’t know if it will help basketball because our basketball league is already tough,” said Warren Regina basketball and softball coach Diane Laffey. “But softball? Yes! We need some new blood in softball because nobody wants to play Mercy and us.”

Initially, Laffey was concerned about the timeline differences between the Michigan High School Athletic Association and the Ohio State Athletic Association.

Girls soccer, for instance, is played in the fall in Ohio while it is a spring sport in Michigan.

Basketball in Ohio begins a week earlier than it does in Michigan, but the Toledo schools have obtained a waiver to compete in games in Michigan during its one-game sectional week in Ohio.

“It won’t be without many challengers, of course,” said Michaels. “Because of that, athletic administrators at all 32 of our schools now have met multiple times and have worked out most of the details that will allow scheduling to be as fluid as possible.”

In working on scheduling, Michaels discovered the Catholic League will now have the flexibility to mold schedules that will be specific to each sport based on the strength of the schools.

“We have the ability to create schedules for both the good and not so good schools,” he said. “And some schools have the same thing happening in their schools where they’re very good in one sport, not very good in another and we can and create a competitive schedule for as many schools as possible. The Toledo schools really help fit our needs for that.”

Getting the five Toledo Catholic schools to work together and joining the Catholic League seemed like a seminal moment for the schools.

“I think people in the community are well aware of our rivalries and maybe that’s what people think of first,” said Father Geoff Rose, OSFS, president of St. Francis. “I hope this is an opportunity for the people in the community to see us work really well together. It’s not the first time we’ve worked well together.”

The Catholic League began this expansion with 21 Catholic schools as well as associate member non-Catholic schools: Ann Arbor Greenhills, Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood, Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett, Macomb Lutheran North and Bloomfield Hills Jewish Academy.

“I think it’s a good thing that they’re all Catholic schools,” said Laffery. “We took in the associate members and everything’s worked out well with them so I’ve got to believe that with the Catholic schools it’s going to be good.”

Michaels said the Toledo schools bring outstanding athletic programs to the league, but there was more to this than just wins and losses.

“Some of it has to do with the success of the Toledo schools along with our success,” he said. “But it’s more and more difficult to find schools that have the same thinking that we have, have the same values that we have, same belief we have so the more we can play schools like that the better off we are.”

Because of its difficulty scheduling football games, Detroit Catholic Central has played the three Toledo schools in the past and has established good working relationships with the schools.

“Anytime you are welcoming schools that are focused on faith-based athletics and education, that’s a win for everyone,” Michaels said. “It’s going to take some work, but why not welcome in like-minded schools.”

Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1. Save $10 on his new book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” by ordering right now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why Detroit Catholic League added five schools from Toledo