AKRON — Like Wawasee High School did a week ago, Tippecanoe Valley has also declined a request to join the Northern State Conference. Following the departure of Knox, Culver, Triton and LaVille to the newly formed Hoosier North Athletic Conference, the remaining four NSC teams (Bremen, Jimtown, John Glenn and New Prairie) have been looking for replacements. The current NSC will remain the same until the fall of 2015, when the departing teams will be joined in the HNAC by Caston, Winamac, North Judson, West Central and Pioneer. According to Tippecanoe Valley Athletic Director Duane Burkhart, the NSC invited Culver Academies, Mishawaka Marian, Rochester, Tippecanoe Valley and Wawasee to join them, with other reports suggesting Fairfield has also turned down an invite. Marian has gone on record as saying it would only join if others did so, but with Wawasee and now Valley declining, that looks unlikely and options are becoming limited for the four remaining teams. Burkhart had mentioned waiting until mid-October to make a decision, but didn’t need to wait that long. “There were several factors which weighed on the decision, mostly the instability of the conference which currently only has four schools remaining,” Burkhart said in an e-mail sent out Tuesday. Distance also factored into the decision, as New Prairie would have been an hour-and-a-half trip one way. Valley has been a member of the Three Rivers Conference since 1976, and it will continue to be going forward.
