Tuesday, October 15, 2002
The athletic directors, past and present, offered logical reasons.
By JOE SCALZO
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
BOARDMAN -- Austintown Fitch High athletic director Dick Kenney and former Boardman athletic director Jim Fox have spent the past six months explaining why their schools left the Steel Valley Conference for the Federal League.
The conspiracy theorists remained unconvinced.
So, for the record, did the move have anything to do with Maurice Clarett leaving Fitch for Warren Harding, or with the parochial schools allegedly recruiting athletes from Boardman and Fitch?
"This decision had nothing to do with Maurice Clarett," Kenney said at Monday's Curbstone Coaches luncheon at Lockwood House. "Maurice was not an Austintown native born and bred. He's from Youngstown. For us to claim him ... would be foolish."
Kenney also dismissed the recruiting rumors.
Heard it before
"Quite frankly, I don't know of any instance where the schools have been found guilty of recruiting problems," Kenney, who has been athletic director at Fitch since 1989, said. "There's a lot of rumors and innuendo out there and a lot of people have said things that aren't true.
"Have people asked us this before? Absolutely. Is this stuff being said? Yes. But our decision to leave [the Steel Valley Conference] had nothing to do with that."
Many of Mooney's athletes through the years have come from Boardman's school district. Fox said the best way to keep athletes at Boardman is to build up the school's athletic program.
"We want our program to be so good that kids grow up wanting to be Spartans and not Cardinals or Fighting Irish," Fox, who retired last June, said. "It's much more productive to focus on getting better than to be looking over our shoulder at what other schools might be doing."
Boardman and Fitch will leave the SVC in June. They begin high school play in the Federal League next fall -- the schools will not join for middle school athletics -- and will immediately be eligible for league titles in all sports except football.
The schools are still under contract for a few football games next fall and could not schedule all Federal League teams in football until 2004. Football players and coaches will still be eligible for all-league honors.
"It's important to understand that this decision goes beyond the football arena," Kenney said. "There are 68 athletic teams, including middle school teams, in the Austintown school district. I feel like I have a responsibility to address every single one of those."
The Federal League will provide better competition in all sports, Fox said.
Net effect
"Are we going to need to get better? Absolutely," Fox said. "In some sports we'll do very well, in some very average and in some very poor. It's a challenge for our program."
The remaining SVC teams voted to stay together last month, something Kenney was happy to hear.
"It's important to give the remaining schools some credit," Kenney said. "Will it be the same? Absolutely not. But it never was the same. There's always been change.
"I hope this [vote] is another chapter in the history of the Steel Valley and not the end of the book."
scalzo@vindy.com