BENNETT'S MINUTES: WIC facing changes with possible exit of Cascade

The second change in the Western Indiana Conference roster of schools just three years after its expansion to 12 members could be taking place soon.

Unofficial reports indicate that Cascade, one of the schools most remotely located from a majority of the other schools, is seriously considering departing the WIC for the Indiana Crossroads Conference.

Monrovia’s departure to that conference was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for the former West Central Conference, which led to a merger of the remaining WCC schools with the WIC schools at that time.

South Vermillion departed the “new” WIC after one year and was replaced by Indian Creek.

The Indiana Crossroads Conference currently has eight teams, all either in Marion County or considerably closer for Cascade than locales such as West Vigo and Sullivan.

Beech Grove, Indianapolis Lutheran, Cardinal Ritter, Indianapolis Scecina, Park Tudor, Speedway and Triton Central are other current ICC members.

Rumors have swirled for the past couple of years that Cascade may be looking to make such a move.

The school has started construction on a facilities renovation project involving adding Sprinturf artificial playing surfaces to its football/soccer, baseball and softball fifelds as well as a resurfacing of the track and new field event areas.

“This is only a portion of the total projects across the district,” Cascade athletic director Scott Stevens said. “We are also doing boiler/chiller/mechanical work and security upgrades throughout the entire district. These are very exciting times for our student-athletes, school and community.”

No one seems certain if the ICC has already voted to accept Cascade, or if Cascade has made its decision official to leave the WIC.

If the Cadets do make this move, the obvious question is — what does the WIC do with a prime number total (11) of remaining schools?

There seem to be several possibilities:

South Putnam, Cloverdale, North Putnam move on also

This option is the one I would pick if somehow it were up to me, but a new home for them would obviously have to be available before this could even be considered.

This column previously speculated on talk of these three Putnam County schools seeking to forge a union with the Wabash River Conference (joining the eight remaining Parke, Vermillion and Warren County schools now that Turkey Run is closing). Haven’t heard anything on this prospect recently, and this idea doesn’t thrill me since I absolutely abhor the concept of big conferences with divisions. (Those nightmares only make sense in college, where they are trying to get as much television money as possible.)

Another possibility would be to go south and connect with Linton, Bloomfield, Eastern Greene, Shakamak, Clay City, White River Valley and North Daviess in the Southwestern Indiana conference. This idea has many flaws.

Only four of those schools play football, and it’s a geographic disaster. That North Putnam to North Daviess trip may require an overnight stay.

What makes the most sense would be the three non-Greencastle schools in Putnam County somehow finding three schools close enough to forge a six-team league in which they could be competitive in more sports.

Or possibly a hybrid deal, in which North Putnam goes to the WRC and the other two county schools go to the SWIAC.

Could the three Montgomery County schools, or maybe Western Boone, be pried away from the Sagamore Conference to form a new league? I’d find out.

Find a new 12th school

This doesn’t seem very feasible either. Indian Creek was relatively easy to attract, because that school has been stuck in limbo and had very few options.

Linton-Stockton would be a logical school to go after. It’s not ideal geographically, either, but any league that covers this much area is going to have trouble finding someone ideally located who would want to join. Finding another desperate school like Indian Creek would be nice, but there are no other similar options this time around besides Linton-Stockton.

There are actually still a few dozen schools around the state without conference affiliations, but most are new charter schools who don’t have all the same sports and are located very far away from current WIC schools.

Delphi might be an interesting “desperate school” option if it were closer.

Continue with 11

As much as this prospect seems odd, it may be the most likely thing to happen.

All potential remedies to the odd number of teams that I have heard speculated include the elimination of the East and West divisions for team sports. This option is something I would vote for if my opinion mattered.

Flaws with the divisional tiebreaker system caused problems in both boys’ basketball and baseball this year, and many people would like to see the league to to a full round-robin schedule where everyone plays everyone else in every sport.

I suppose that would be good in some respects, but still wouldn’t solve what would happen if three teams tied for first in a sport. Determining the winner would still need to come down to a points tiebreaker exactly like the one already used to break divisional ties now.

Football is another huge problem with this plan. Schools can obviously not mathematically cram 10 league games into a nine-week regular season.

More than one athletic director I know favors divisions for football only, if Cascade departs, with some sort of a “big school/small school” component rather than geography.

But with North Putnam, South Putnam and Cloverdale the only remaining Class 2A schools if Cascade leaves, this option is also flawed. Northview, Edgewood and Owen Valley are all in Class 4A and the other five are all in Class 3A.

Who else goes with the Putnam County schools in this plan?

So which one wins?

As much as it seems leaving the WIC to find a new league with similarly-sized schools would benefit the three Putnam County schools the most, that option seems difficult.

The best of these solutions, in lieu of other choices not listed here, would be to add Linton-Stockton and continue with the wretched divisional system as it currently exists.

Good luck with this deal.

ODDS AND ENDS

Here are some leftover notes from the last few weeks:

• Edgewood is also adding an artificial playing surface as part of a multi-million dollar renovation of its football/track facilities.

Northview’s football coach also recently gave his corporation’s board of trustees information on what his program would like to have in terms of facilities.

Southmont and Crawfordsville are two other nearby schools who have artificial turf surfaces. These facilities are awesome, and if schools can afford it they are a great deal. However, they are no guarantee of success — considering Crawfordsville’s second winless season last fall in the past five years.

• Curt Simic has been approved by the Richland Bean Blossom school board as the next girls’ coach at Edgewood.

Simic was an assistant at Edgewood under Gary Sims for the past three years, and previously was a longtime assistant at Bloomington North.

Sims resigned after 11 seasons at the helm with a career record of 164-108.

No word yet on a new Greencastle girls’ coach.

Clay City now has openings for both varsity basketball coaching positions.

• Lots of movement in athletic directors.

South Putnam has hired Tom Starnes, a 24-year veteran of the Indianapolis Public Schools, to replace Troy Burgess. Starnes was most recently at Indianapolis Tech. We will get with him next month to talk about his new position.

Northview’s Charley Jackson is retiring after a long career with the Knights.

Former Knight softball coach Bethany Jones is replacing Jackson, with her brother — Scott Buell — moving over to be the school’s boys’ athletic director.

Monrovia AD Brian Lewis is returning to his Jasper roots, where his father (Denny) was the long time athletic director for the Wildcats.

His replacement is Todd Evers, who was the varsity football coach at Marshall (Ill.).

• Chris Jones, who coached South Putnam to back-to-back softball state titles in 2011-12, has resigned as boys’ basketball coach at Rising Sun.

Jones is taking a job as an assistant principal at Princeton High School. He coached the Shiners for the past five seasons, compiling a 41-79 record.

• Greencastle’s Callan Taylor will play for a new coach in her final season of college basketball at St. Mary-of-the-Woods.

The Pomeroys have been led by athletic director Deanna Bradley during Taylor’s first three seasons, but Bradley has turned over the reins to Grinnell College men’s assistant basketball coach Bob Belf.

The Pomeroys had an interesting end to their season this winter in the consolation game at the USCAA National Championships. The opposing team’s coach was ejected from the game with six minutes left in the third quarter, and the officials granted SMWC as the winner by forfeit due to the coach’s actions.

Taylor will be the team’s only senior next winter.

• Several other college signings have taken place recently, with stories forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

South Putnam’s Lillie Stein (basketball at Franklin), Maddie McHugh (track at Hanover) and Alex Fanning (swimming at Hanover) all made their commitments official, as well as Cloverdale’s Tyler Kaeff (football/track at DePauw) and Greencastle’s Jacob Meyer (football at Millikin).