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South Range to join Eastern Buckeye Conference
By STEVE WILAJ
NORTH LIMA
South Range is leaving the Inter-Tri County League.
On Tuesday, the South Range school board approved a move to the newly formed Eastern Buckeye Conference, which will begin competition in the fall of 2018.
The Raiders will become the eighth team of the new league, joining Alliance, West Branch, Minerva, Salem, Carrollton and Canton South — which all withdrew from the Northeastern Buckeye Conference earlier this year.
“It’s a good fit,” South Range athletic director Don Feren said. “Some of the teams we had played in the past, some we are currently playing in some sports. So it’s pretty good for us and, geographically, it’s not a terrible fit either.”
The Raiders were a member of the 16-team ITCL since its inception in 2006. The conference was created when the Inter-County League and the Tri-County League merged together.
Superintendents of the ITCL schools met in mid-February at South Range High, where three proposals to disband or strengthen the league were rejected. That meeting took place because of the league’s smaller schools being unhappy with the success of its larger schools (South Range, Crestview and Springfield).
This past season marked the first that the ITCL used a three-tier system, as South Range was joined in the Red Tier by Springfield, Crestview, East Palestine and United.
“Ideally, you would have liked to see the whole ITCL stay together,” Feren said. “It was a very good league. You had competitiveness in every sport. There’s a lot of rivalries and a lot of games that will no longer be continued with that split. There was a lot of bad feelings on a lot of schools on how that [meeting] took place.”
While the ITCL is still in-tact, South Range’s exit may be the first sign of major changes.
“Can you say we were pushed out? No,” Feren said. “I guess everyone else just left us.”
Since 2010, South Range’s football team won seven games twice (2010 and 2012), while it went 10-2 in 2013 and 8-2 in 2014. The Raiders were 6-4 last season.
South Range has also recently been among the ITCL’s top teams in basketball, baseball and softball each year.
Feren said South Range’s interest in possibly joining the EBC began in October.
“We had looked with those schools earlier on,” he said. “Back in October, we actually went to some meetings with them. At that point in time they weren’t sure if they were going to expand or what — it was more of an informational meeting. But we had interest in them back then.”