By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — Fall sports teams started practicing Monday, and that means football scrimmages are a little over a week away.
There are two major changes in the local high school football scene: Tippecanoe Valley changing conferences and Warsaw moving to a new class for the playoffs in November.
If you have read my column for a long time, you know that fans of Valley sports have been trying to convince me that they needed to evacuate the Three Rivers Conference.
I never was completely convinced, and while I am sad to see Valley no longer in that league, they aren’t, and we all must accept that fact and move on to what is next—the Indiana Northern State Conference.
The break-up with the TRC was messy, and there were a lot of hard feelings expressed about it by the remaining members. Some of those relationships will take a while to repair, but that can’t be helped now either.
The biggest reason they left the TRC was because the quality of the football teams in that conference had dropped off. It used to be that even the smallest members were a tough out on Friday nights in the fall.
Southwood was a hard place to win, Whitko and Manchester were solid and North Miami was gritty and tough.
It was a league that was seven teams deep most years when it came to dangerous teams to deal with on your way to a conference championship.
That depth helped teams naturally prepare for their playoffs in either 1A, 2A or 3A.
That is no longer the case.
Last year, with only Valley on Rochester’s schedule, only four of the 10 TRC teams had a better-than-.500 overall record.
Valley’s new conference only has six members right now, but I think it won’t take long for two athletic directors to look at their current situation and think that the INSC is a better long-term deal for their school.
I take my responsibility as a broadcaster and columnist seriously, and I think it would be unfair to mention schools that could be good fits in those last two openings. Believe me, I think I can identify several schools that would work.
Bremen, Jimtown, Glenn and Knox are all of similar size and all come with some history of success in football. LaVille is smaller, but has a more recent history of having good teams.
Having only five opponents in the conference means Valley has to find four non-conference games to complete their slate.
Wawasee and Rochester at home followed by a third home game with Hammond Morton, then a mid-season trip to Western outside of Kokomo will work nicely.
And their sectional doesn’t include any parochial schools from the Indy Metro area, so that will be a big help in late October.
Warsaw will also face new challenges.
They’ll make a first-ever trip to Indianapolis in Week 2 to face Warren Central.
The conference membership in the Northern Lakes Conference is the same, but the order in which they play them will be different — that changes every two seasons.
The story is what happens after the regular season ends. This will be the first time that Warsaw will be in 5A instead of 6A.
For at least the next two years, there will be no Penn Kingsmen or Carroll or Homestead standing in the Tigers’ way. They will be in a sectional with Fort Wayne North Side, Concord and Goshen — two of those schools, obviously, they will have played already by the time we get to the postseason.
Believe me when I say there are still plenty of quality teams in Warsaw’s path in 5A. They will have to play someone twice — maybe two teams — just to win their sectional. Making a long postseason run won’t be easy, but it will be easier than it’s ever been.
Warsaw is the second-largest school in 5A. Only Valparaiso is bigger. And it’s admittedly very exciting to think of Warsaw winning a sectional and maybe even more.
But with the new class assignment comes something Warsaw football hasn’t had to deal with very often — the weight of expectations.
In 6A, Warsaw hoped to win a sectional game and only won a sectional title once, so there was no expectation of that happening.
Now, playing a class down and the second largest school in that class, Warsaw will now be the hunted instead of the hunter.
Some teams relish that role, others struggle under that burden.
If Warsaw embraces it, it could be a season we won’t forget.
