New look for area’s two big leagues

August 27, 2015 at 12:09a.m.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association lists 78 conferences and 28 independent schools under its 2015-16 umbrella.

Some sports have already begun play and football will get under way locally tonight while both the All-American Conference and Inter-Tri County League get set to unveil their three-tier configurations for the upcoming academic year.

The AAC has 21 member schools that represent Mahoning, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties while the ITCL’s 16 scholastic institutions also cover Mahoning and Trumbull counties, as well as Columbiana County.

“We offer 17 sports for boys and girls and some tiers were tweaked for competitive purposes and balance. That being said, we’ll offer three championships in all sports except for girls golf, boys and girls tennis and wrestling, which have just two tiers,” said Rick King, fourth-year AAC commissioner. “Football has four tiers and swimming just one grouping so we’re very pleased with the new overall configuration.”

League tiers are based on male enrollment with the red representing its larger schools, white intermediate schools and blue smaller enrollment members.

For football only, a Gold Tier was created in order to accommodate larger enrollment members Ashtabula Lakeside, Austintown Fitch, Boardman and Warren Harding while Poland and Niles McKinley will compete in both its red and white tiers, solidifying the red and keeping the white intact.

“For football, we had an expansion committee work with league principals and athletic directors, who then moved to the superintendents for a vote,” King said. “The superintendents felt that in order to keep the league viable and improving, then expansion was the direction in which to head. They wanted teams to play each other and great competition, not only in football but in all sports. Scheduling also becomes a lot easier as well.”

Founded in 2008, the AAC began with 16 league members, lost two schools and then added Austintown Fitch when the Falcons severed ties with the Federal League.

Sitting at 15 schools in 2013, they then added six new members (Brookfield, an original member, left and has now returned) and will go from American and National Division play to a red, white and blue tier configuration.

According to King, three tiers instead of two divisions also provide a psychological advantage for many teams.

“By offering three championships in most of our sports, more teams, especially when heading into a season feel as if they can compete for a title. You have great scheduling opportunities and even crossover games between tiers, which create great games within their respective communities,” King said. “We want excellent competition and our goal is always to improve the AAC, stabilize the league and provide that competition for everyone to see in and around the Mahoning Valley.”

The league’s eight-team red tier includes Ashtabula Lakeside, Austintown Fitch, Boardman, Canfield, East, Howland, Poland and Warren Harding while its six-team white configuration includes Ashtabula Edgewood, Hubbard, Jefferson, Lakeview, Niles McKinley and Struthers.

Their seven-team blue tier is comprised of Brookfield, Campbell Memorial, Champion, Girard, LaBrae, Liberty and Newton Falls.

Sports offered include baseball, basketball, bowling, cross country, football, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, volleyball and wrestling.

For ITCL commissioner Paul Andraso, the only figurehead the league has known since the Inter-County and Tri-County Leagues merged in 2005, a three-tier trial run this past spring was most helpful heading into this year.

There were 16 original members and its membership remains at 16 today while its previous two-division system was based on two-year enrollment numbers provided to EMIS (Education Management Information System).

“At the time, our top eight schools by enrollment comprised the upper division while the eight schools with the least enrollment made up the lower division,” Andraso said. “The enrollment figures are used for two years and about the fifth-year of our league, a problem arose in that there were five schools in the middle that didn’t know if their enrollment would be up or down the next time figures were to be computed. Another problem that came up was that four of the schools’ boys and girls programs participated in different divisions. Transportation costs became a concern, especially in the spring.”

Its boys and girls divisions barely lasted a full year when league superintendents agreed to go to three divisions in time for the 2015-16 school year.

They also agreed to use this past spring as a trial run for the concept.

“Busing is a problem for many schools, not just those in our conference and the one thing that we were able to do by going to three tiers this past spring was to eliminate many transportation problems and costs,” Andraso said.

The ITCL, like the AAC, has a red, white and blue division with the five largest school’s grouped into its red tier, its southern schools comprising the white tier and northern schools the blue tier.

“It’s been more about proximity and geography than numbers in our white and blue tiers,” he said. “I insisted that we have an opt-out clause in all sports so that our smaller schools would have the ability to schedule another school if there was a disparity with those numbers. It also allowed them to continue playing natural rivalries. Also, it has allowed spring sports to clear their schedules in order to make room for their Southern trip.”

Andraso made it clear that an opt-out clause is only enforced when the two schools mutually agree to do so.

Last spring, three champions were crowned in baseball, softball, boys track and girls track and to Andraso, all went off without a hitch.

“Many thought that we were a league of 16, yet operating as two leagues of eight. I think we’ve listened to the schools and attempted to fix those concerns,” he said. “We’ve solved any proximity and size problems and will use the upcoming year to see how everything works out. Schedule-wise, other than in football, each division rival plays one another twice and the remainder of the league once.”

The ITCL consists of eight Columbiana schools, six schools based in Mahoning County and two Trumbull County entries. Crestview, East Palestine, South Range, Springfield Local and United Local are members of the red tier, and Columbiana, Lisbon, Leetonia, Southern Local and Wellsville are in the white tier.

The blue tier includes Jackson-Milton, Lowellville, McDonald, Sebring, Mineral Ridge and Western Reserve.

Champions are crowned in 13 combined sports, including football, cross country and soccer in the fall, basketball and wrestling in the winter and baseball, softball and track and field in the spring.