Inside Lakewood and Olivet's conference move from the GLAC to the CAAC

Olivet Athletic Director Matt Seidl and Lakewood Athletic Director Mike Quinn sensed change was coming.

As word spread in the spring about Leslie likely on its way out of the Greater Lansing Activities Conference to join the expanding Jackson area Cascades Conference, they knew their league was taking a hit.

When Maple Valley recently indicated its plans to depart for the Big 8 and reduce the membership of the GLAC to five schools, both saw the writing on the wall.

Seidl described it as the "real clincher" as Olivet and Lakewood charted their next moves.

That led both to apply for admission into the Capital Area Activities Conference. And both had their applications unanimously approved during a Wednesday meeting, and will officially join the CAAC starting in the 2023-24 school year. Their departures leave Perry, Stockbridge and Lansing Christian as the GLAC's remaining members.

"Kind of like UCLA and USC (joining the Big Ten), it went from no story at all to the biggest story going in probably about 10 minutes," Quinn said. "I think it's going to be a neat thing. We had a booster club meeting (Wednesday) night and the people in our group were excited. In some ways they feel like this is probably where we belong. A lot of the people in that club played when we were in the Capital Circuit. It's a renewal of rivalries for some of those people as well."

A necessary move

While there is plenty excitement about what's ahead, Seidl acknowledged there's some mixed emotions.

Lakewood and Olivet were founding members of the GLAC in 2014. Olivet joined the conference along with Maple Valley after both had been part of the now disbanded Kalamazoo Valley Athletic Association. Lakewood joined the GLAC along with Stockbridge after both had been part of the CAAC White.

Seidl has enjoyed the last nine years with Olivet being in the GLAC and would have liked to keep it going. The GLAC explored on a few different occasions joining forces with the Central Michigan Athletic Conference over the years to combine with a league featuring Bath, Fowler, Laingsburg, Pewamo-Westphalia, Portland St. Patrick, Potterville and Saranac. They saw that as a logical move with both joining forces in several sports already.

"We've been working with them," Seidl said. "We've collaborated in seven different sports with them already in golf and soccer and different things. (We had) been trying to merge with them. We proposed it three different times to them.

"They don't mind the collaborations with some of the sports that don't have full rosters so to speak of everyone having a sport, but they really don't want to do it full fledged. That is what we hoped that we could do and have two divisions in sports. They've had a lot of turnover there with ADs and we just couldn't get the momentum going. We just couldn't wait any longer."

It was also clear to Quinn nothing would happen between the leagues. He realized Lakewood and Olivet would likely find themselves on their own.

"It was very apparent to both myself and to Matt Seidl that we were the elephants in the room and that anything that was going to be any kind of joint consolidation merger was not going to include Lakewood or Olivet," Quinn said.

"We started looking around and when you look at schools, Olivet and Lakewood are fairly like schools but there's nothing around us that you can logically say makes a perfect fit for either one of us."

A natural fit in CAAC

Olivet and Lakewood found their best fit in the CAAC, which drove both to get their applications in prior to Wednesday so they could become members starting next school year.

Both schools see the CAAC as the perfect landing spot with many schools of similar size and in similar areas also part of the league. Lakewood and Olivet will join the CAAC White next school year and compete for league titles against Charlotte, Eaton Rapids, Ionia, Lansing Catholic, Portland and Sexton.

The move allows Lakewood to share a league with one of its rivals - Ionia.

"Obviously we've played Ionia in football for every single year we've played football," Quinn said. "That's a rivalry that even if we weren't in the CAAC would continue. We have some natural rivals with other schools in the CAAC. I think the biggest thing is when you look at other sports, you look at natural rivals and geographic location. You go to this school and I go to this school but our parents work together. There's that kind of thing.

"Quite honestly, we don't have a whole lot of people in our community that work with people whose kids go to Stockbridge. Our parents (at our school) don't work with people with kids that go to Perry. Whereas the schools in the CAAC that we will be competing against - I think we have a lot of like schools. We have a lot of like locations so the rivalries are just going to continue to grow."

Olivet also has some natural rivalries with some CAAC members with Charlotte and Eaton Rapids close drives. The Eagles have formed a rivalry in football over the years with Lansing Catholic with the programs meeting in the playoffs on several occasions.

Across the board, Seidl said his coaches saw the CAAC as the better fit for them.

"We're excited about the competition and just the credibility − it's one of the conferences that has the best reputations in the state," Seidl said. "Everybody knows the Lansing area league. They don't always know the name or don't even know what it stands for but it's just a great league. We play a lot of these teams that are going to be in our conference and our division anyway. We have relationships with Eaton Rapids, Charlotte and Portland and et cetera.

"It's going to be good. It's going to be a challenge for us. Like I said, we're excited for it."

Aside from the benefits geographically and being with similar schools, Quinn said its also important Lakewood and Olivet will gain stability in the CAAC.

"The divisions may change but the landscape is not going to," Quinn said. "There isn't going to be a situation where a school like Mason decides that they are going to join a Flint league. It's just not going to happen. Geographically we're all associated. We're all associated with the capitol. We're all associated with downtown and all of the schools in the league associate themselves with being Lansing area schools.

"I think that's beneficial from the standpoint that we have a home. We have some place we can call home and that everybody else calls home too and the likeness of the schools and the likeness of the communities and the likeness of what the landscape is going to look like."

Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @brian_calloway.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: High school sports: Inside Lakewood and Olivet's move to the CAAC