Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Warren Harding athletic director Paul Trina said the Raiders will be an independent team.
By JOE SCALZO
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
The All-American Football Conference is officially dead. For now, anyway.
Warren Harding athletic director Paul Trina, the architect of the proposed 12-team, three-divison conference, couldn't get enough commitments from the schools and the idea has been scrapped.
"We're just going to fend for ourselves for a while," Trina said. "We had four meetings and it was tough to get anywhere, so the idea sort of stalled. Getting everyone to agree on an idea is pretty difficult."
Proposed set up
The league was drawn up as a replacement for the soon-to-be defunct Steel Valley Conference. Red, the largest division, would have had Harding, Cleveland St. Ignatius, Lakewood St. Edward and Massillon Washington. White, the parochial school division, would have had Ursuline, Mooney, Canton Central Catholic and St. Thomas Aquinas. Blue, the smaller public school division, would have had Steubenville, East Liverpool and the Youngstown consolidated schools.
"One of the problems was that the schools in the White division couldn't commit to playing each other," Trina said. "First Canton Central Catholic backed out, then St. Thomas Aquinas, then we thought we had a commitment from Walsh Jesuit and they didn't want to do it."
There were a number of problems. Some public schools didn't know if they could make enough money playing parochial schools. Some schools weren't comfortable playing such a high level of competition. Some schools just didn't want to play each other.
"A lot of the schools are used to being independent," Trina said. "We wanted a league affiliation and not having one is a little scary. But we've at least had some initial discussion with the schools so maybe something could happen in the future.
"We'll keep our door open."
Badger leaving TAC
The Trumbull Athletic Conference will lose Badger after the winter sports season, but the remaining eight schools have no plans for expansion, TAC-8 commissioner Mel Staats said.
"The talk was, is and will remain with eight teams," he said. "We have no plans to expand right now. I think the new league will work well for [Badger] and it's not going to hurt our league."
Badger will join the new Northeast Athletic Conference next year with Lordstown, Bloomfield, Bristol, Pymatuning Valley, Maplewood and Southington, Staats said. Only Pymatuning Valley and Southington have football teams.
"Technically, there was a two-year deal with Badger, but we said hey, why hold them up?" Staats said. "It's not a major, major deal and it really only opens up a few more independent games. A lot of our schools don't have a problem with playing more non-league games."
scalzo@vindy.com