'I don't know where we go': Lucas continues search for new conference amid MBC uncertainty
LUCAS — When Lucas athletic director Taylor Iceman learned of Loudonville's intent to leave the Mid-Buckeye Conference for the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference, he pulled out a giant map of Ohio.
He started by putting a pin on Lucas, Ohio, and then marked off every small school in the surrounding area and drew a big circle within a 50-mile radius. He separated the towns by what athletic conference they were in and four the Firelands Conference to the north, the Northern 10 Conference to the west, the KMAC to the south and the Wayne County Athletic League to the east.
And then Iceman went to work sending out email after email to athletic directors and principals from all over North Central Ohio simply asking what it would take for them to accept Lucas into their conference, giving the Cubs a stable home for their athletic future because it doesn't seem like the Mid-Buckeye Conference, which will be made up of St. Peter's, Mansfield Christian, Central Christian, Crestline and Lucas after the 2023-24 athletic year, is going to be a long-term solution with the departure of Loudonville.
He first started with the Firelands Conference, a league that is the model of consistency in North Central Ohio and hasn't seen any change since Black River left the league in 1993. Since then, Crestview, Mapleton, Monroeville, New London, Plymouth, St. Paul, South Central and Western Reserve have competed against each other for the last 30 years without any coming or going.
Given the schools and their sizes, Lucas seems to fit in well, but an eight-school conference seems to be the way everything is going at this point in time.
Still, Iceman had to try. He sent emails just asking simply what would it take to get Lucas into the league. What are the reservations? Is it facilities? Enrollment? Travel time? Any information he could get would be greatly appreciated and would give him something to work with. Maybe it is something that can be addressed and fixed or worked on over time. He never knows unless he asks.
But responses are scarce, leaving Iceman stuck wondering what it would take.
"From what I gather from the schools that reply, they are OK with bringing us in and the travel time," Iceman said. "But it is a majority vote and there are still those outliers who won't give it the green light."
When Highland left the KMAC in 2021-22 to rejoin the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference, it left an opening that needed to be filled, and Iceman was all over it. He reached out to the KMAC schools to lobby for Lucas to be accepted. Lucas was denied being told that its enrollment numbers just didn't line up with other members of the league despite having bigger enrollment numbers than current KMAC member Danville.
But it was more about the younger grades and the numbers of the future that were concerning, which Iceman completely understands, and Lucas has plans in the works to possibly add a preschool program with the idea of growing numbers in the school.
But he also knows there is no reason for any league to ever believe Lucas will not have varsity programs in every sport available.
"My kids are in those younger grades, and I will tell you right now we will have a football team and all of our sports will have an increase in participation," Iceman said. "We are playing peewee football right now and we struggle to find teams to play because not a lot of schools have them. We are playing the same three teams twice because that is all we had to play. So we will have teams in the future and no conference needs to worry about that at all.
"The thing I have told all of these schools I have ever reached out to is what Lucas is going through with participation numbers at the JV and middle school levels, every small school is going through it, too. Enrollment is down everywhere and in turn, athletic participation is down. You even have some of the biggest schools in these leagues canceling entire seasons because they don't have enough kids to play. It is what it is right now, but I always tell them, if they take us on, there will not be a detriment to doing so. You will not have to shut things down because you added Lucas. We will always have varsity teams."
Lucas is left in limbo with a strong desire to join a conference, especially with the uncertainty of the future of the Mid-Buckeye Conference.
"It would be different if we did something wrong like some of the private schools in the big cities that get kicked out for embarrassing teams and not doing things the right way," Iceman said. "But we haven't done that. The way I look at it is we are coming out of the golden era of Lucas athletics and we don't have a conference. It feels like if they don't want us now, will it ever happen? It is tough to not be able to do much about it."
How Lucas got here
Early in its history, Lucas was a member of the Richland County league until 1963 when it joined the Johnny Appleseed Conference with the likes of Lexington, Ontario, Bellville and Butler among other large schools. In 1969, Lucas went to the first edition of the Mid-Buckeye Conference and stayed until 1980 when it joined the Black Fork Valley Conference until 1982 when it went back to the MBC. In 1999, it joined the now-defunct North Central Conference which was made up of teams that make up today's Northern 10 Conference and KMAC with some outliers in the MOAC. In 2013, Lucas went back to the MBC in the middle of a 56-game boys basketball losing streak.
"We were in the NCC and from my understanding, we got kicked out of that and then the MBC formed again and it worked for a little while," Iceman said. "But with where we are at and how our athletics are made up with having football and no other school in the league has football, it is just not ideal anymore. But right now we are just stuck."
And solutions are either rare, or they are in the hands of other schools. There is literally nothing Lucas can do other than keep communication lines open and hope a majority of schools in a league come around and vote it in.
What Iceman doesn't want to do is repeat the past. While members of the NCC, Lucas was losing a lot across all sports with a few years here and there when it had standout football or basketball seasons. But it got to a point, like in boys basketball and a 56-game losing streak, that it created a ripple effect making kids not want to come out for sports and lose all the time further delaying a turnaround.
"We could join a league just to join a league, but if it turns into a situation where we are getting our butts kicked every single night, it will kind of be catastrophic because then you will have kids not want to play because they are tired of getting beat so bad and not having any fun," Iceman said. "That will just add to the problems. That is the tough part. I just don't know where you go."
Why Lucas would be a great partner in a league
Lucas will always be a sports-crazed town. No matter what, the kids will play hard and the fans will turn out to show their support. And that is the biggest draw of all. For other schools, hosting Lucas means bringing money to the athletic department because they are always going to travel well.
"When we talk about gates and the things that are important that will help both schools, everyone knows we are going to bring a big crowd," Iceman said. "We have a great following that always shows up, and that will in turn bring money to these schools. That is one thing that I think would make us a valuable addition to any league."
The Firelands Conference has had the perfect opportunity to run that experiment over the last few football seasons. New London, one of the biggest schools in the FC, did not have the numbers to field an 11-man football team and instead, opted to play 8-man. Each Firelands Conference school could have picked up Lucas, an independent in football due to the MBC not being a football conference, and saw for itself how nice it would have been to have Lucas in the league.
When Iceman got wind that New London was going to not field a football team, he reached out to every FC school looking to schedule games with them and offered to let them dictate the conditions. In 2021, no one picked the Cubs up. In 2022, it was just Crestview and Mapleton. In 2023, Lucas will play Crestview, Monroeville and Plymouth.
When Loudonville leaves the MBC, there will be only two football-playing schools left. Lucas has been independent for 10 years and Crestline jumped in the Northwest Central Conference for football only. Being independent has helped Lucas tremendously with competitive games every single week and has ignited a run of nine consecutive playoff appearances.
But filling a schedule is nothing short of a nightmare and it will only get worse if they have to go independent in every other sport, too.
"I have told a lot of people, us being independent has been great for us," Iceman said. "It is a major pain in the butt because we have such a hard time finding games when everyone else is playing their league games, but we got a lot out of it from a competitive standpoint. You go out and pick up a big school and you either beat them or you play well and lose and you get so much more out of it. We had a losing record last football season and went to the regional semifinals and probably should have gone to the regional finals.
"So, we have kind of grown accustomed to what we deal with in football, but if we have to go independent in every other sport, that is going to be a major pain. Finding 27 baseball and 27 softball games will be nearly impossible. We will be traveling all over the place."
What's wrong with the MBC?
There really isn't anything wrong with the MBC from a league standpoint, but Lucas just no longer fits. It needs a conference that offers football and the MBC needs to find other small schools with similar situations as St. Peter's, Mansfield Christian and Central Christian where they do not field football teams, but do have several other sports.
In recent years, it has been a struggle for some members of the MBC to field varsity teams. St. Peter's girls basketball was shut down for a year, Central Christian doesn't have a softball team this year and didn't have a baseball team last year and none of them have football teams.
Last girls basketball season, Crestline paid Loudonville and Mansfield Christian $3,000 apiece to not play them as part of a league bylaw that requires a school to pay $1,500 to break a contracted game. So, even the games that are contracted to be played aren't being played.
The Mid-Buckeye Conference does have a future. It is a solid soccer league with Mansfield Christian, St. Peter's, Central Christian, Mapleton and Crestview, which come over from the Firelands to play soccer. Loudonville will likely have to stay in the MBC for soccer as the KMAC does not have enough schools for a league.
The MBC could pick up other small schools that play soccer and are parts of leagues that do not offer the sport and build a nice big small-school soccer conference.
But that leaves Lucas still looking for a home.
"I don't know where we go," Iceman said. "I am open to anything. If someone has an idea, send it my way and I will give them all the credit for it. We just have to figure something out. Where that is or what that is, I don't know at this point."
jfurr@gannett.com
740-244-9934
Twitter: @JakeFurr11
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Lucas High School will look to move on from the Mid-Buckeye Conference
