By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — Well, it’s happening … Tippecanoe Valley is changing conferences.
Last week, members of three different high school leagues in North Indiana announced their intentions to split from those alliances and form a new conference.
At the moment, six schools in all have declared that they will join the new venture: Knox, and LaVille from the Hoosier North Conference; Bremen, Glenn and Jimtown from the Northern Indiana Conference; and Tippecanoe Valley from the Three Rivers Conference.
Let me back you up and remind you how we got to where we are.
The Northern State Conference broke up in 2014 when LaVille, Culver, Triton and Knox left to join the new Hoosier North Conference, and New Prairie, Glenn, Jimtown and Bremen melded into the Northern Indiana Conference.
I wrote then, and correctly so as it turns out, that the four new NIC schools wouldn’t remain there for the long run because it was impossible to see schools the size of Bremen and Jimtown competing in a conference that includes Penn and being happy.
I also remember saying that, from a financial standpoint, those add-ons wouldn’t be happy with the revenue generated by being in a conference where Penn fans don’t travel except for games against Mishawaka and the South Bend schools don’t even go to their home games let alone the away ones.
I said it would be a financial bummer too, and it’s been that.
I also was skeptical about Triton’s fan base being too excited about being in a conference with Pioneer and North Judson, and I wondered how many Pioneer fans would be interested in traveling to Bourbon.
Also that year, Peru and Maconaquah become the ninth and tenth members of the TRC.
That’s where we’ve come from, now where are we going?
I wrote last September that Valley should sit tight in the TRC and not jump into an existing conference because there weren’t any good landing places for them. And while I understood that the Vikings football team has been scorching the TRC landscape for the last two seasons, I said that was no reason to change conferences.
Two years, only one of which they went undefeated in, does not a dynasty make.
But Valley Nation has clearly grown bored with the TRC and it’s now looking forward to this new league, which at this point is called the “Conference That Has No Name Yet” conference.
This new alignment is currently only six teams, but they can certainly function with six in the short term until they find two others. The biggest hurdle will be for the football teams to find non-conference opponents for Weeks 3 and 4 when other schools are starting their conference schedules. If they don’t find seventh and eighth members soon, they will have to put up with some clunky schedules for a while.
But, when alliances like this form and are announced like they were last week, who knows what athletic director read the news on Twitter and said, “ya know, maybe we should think about our own situation.”
A natural choice for one of those openings would be Rochester, but Rochester seems to not be in the mix. They might, actually, be of the mindset to join the Hoosier North.
I know what you are thinking — you can’t imagine a world where Valley and Rochester don’t play each other with conference implications not being part of what’s at stake either, can you?
That day is coming, for all of us. You’re waiting … waiting for my answer to the question “what do you think?” I am slow to immediately dismiss things, so you will not hear me say phrases like “it’s doomed to fail” or “I give it five years to fall apart.”
But there are realities that fans from Tippecanoe Valley will have to face as they get ready to change conferences next summer.
You need to understand that rivalries like you have had for decades in the TRC take time to build. The relationship between the Vikings and Manchester, Whitko and the rest were special. They don’t just magically become epic right away. And without a strong geographic tie here, Valley fans will struggle for a while to feel angst against Glenn and Jimtown, for example.
You also need to understand that Knox being part of this brings about a time zone issue. Knox is on Central Time, which means they are an hour behind everyone else in the league. That means the long trip to Knox will be longer because games will start later and end later.
Also, keep in mind that more of your winter contests are going to be affected by the weather.
With Walkerton, Bremen, Baugo Township in Elkhart County and the LaPaz/Lakeville Metroplex as regular destinations — all places in prime lake effect snow territory — more of your basketball games, wrestling meets and swim meets are going to get postponed. Not every winter is going to be like this last one.
It’s hard to identify the winners from this yet, but the clear loser in this is Triton. They lose the conference members closest to them and are left with a really tough situation.
But, like I said, who knows who else might see this as an opportunity to forge a new path?
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Roger Grossman has been covering local sports in Kosciusko County for more than 30 years and is employed with News Now Warsaw. You can reach him at rgrossman@kensington.media.
