SYRACUSE — The Northern State Conference sent out an invitation, but Wawasee High School kindly declined. A process that started in August, the eight-team NSC has been dashed to four following the exits of Knox, Culver, Triton and LaVille. The departing schools will continue to compete in the conference until the end of the 2014-15 school year, but after that that landscape of the NSC is unclear. The options are to fill the four vacated spots or for the remaining schools – Bremen, Jimtown, John Glenn and New Prairie – to go their separate ways. In an effort to keep the NSC, which began in 1966, in tact, the current schools have been looking for suitors. Among the invitees was Wawasee. Upon receiving the invitation roughly two weeks ago, Wawasee Athletic Director Steve Wiktorowski asked for six weeks or until mid-October to make a choice. He didn’t need that long. “To be honest, two weeks into it, we saw this just wasn’t going to be a good move for us right now,” he said this morning. “We got the information we needed and we ended the process early.” Wawasee may have seemed like a sensible candidate based on its size. In the Northern Lakes Conference, Warsaw ranks as the largest with an enrollment of 2,138 students, based on the IHSAA’s recent numbers, followed by Goshen (1,811), Elkhart Memorial (1,793), Concord (1,523), Northridge (1,291), Plymouth (1,112) Wawasee (933) and NorthWood (853). “The biggest pro, clearly, was how we would rank in size,” Wiktorowski said about the possible move. “In the NLC right now, it’s NorthWood and us, then there’s a pretty big jump in size of enrollment. If we would have gone to the NSC, it would have been just the opposite.” Currently, New Prairie is the largest NSC school with 865 students, while Glenn has 625, Jimtown sits at 586 and Bremen features 485 students. The switch from a smaller school in a conference to one of the potential largest may have meant more athletic wins, but it wasn’t enough to draw Wawasee. “The NSC has good schools, so we didn’t think we’d go in there and dominate,” he said. “We also feel, while sometimes our win/loss record and championship records are not going to be nearly as good in the NLC, our coaches feel strongly that the level of competition does prepare them well for state tournaments. A great example is swimming. We feel competing at that level helps push our kids to get the times that they need to move on to state. We felt, last year, we had a good run in football at the sectional. We felt that having played NLC-caliber football going into that really helped prepare us. We think there are clear benefits to playing that level of competition, even though it doesn’t always show up in wins and losses.” Along with the competition, the prestige of the NLC, a conference Wawasee has been a part of since 1968, also played a large role. “The quality of the NLC was also just hard to turn down,” he said. “Not saying the NSC is not quality, but there’s a lot of uncertainity there – about the travel and about what teams are going to be involved.” Winning and prestige were talking points, but at the end of the day, it was that travel that swayed Wiktorowski, Wawasee Superintendent Tom Edington and Wawasee High School Principal Don Harman. With Bremen currently being the closest school to Wawasee at around 24 miles one way, Jimtown is approximately 27, Glenn is 41 and New Prairie sits 60 miles to the west. “(The distance) would just be too much of a strain on our athletes during the week, to get home even later than they do now,” Wiktorowski said. “Our coaches felt very strongly that could have a real detrimental impact on our kids academically, and that’s our top priority.” Another detriment could have been Wawasee jumping into a conference which would still be looking for another three dance partners. However, according to Wiktorowski, if Wawasee had filled a vacant spot, the other dominoes may have fallen. “We had been in close contact with the other schools that have been invited,” he said. “We were the farthest away (in distance), so we felt that if we had come in, that would have only increased the liklihood that the other ones would have come in. But we also felt, to be fair to everyone, if we knew right away that we weren’t interested, we should communicate that to everybody – to our own fans, our athletes. We felt it was clear we didn’t want to go, let’s let everybody know right now.” Among the other schools rumored to have been invited is the Northern Indiana Conference’s Mishawaka Marian, which has gone on record, saying it would wait to see who else would join before making a commitment. Along with Marian and Wawasee, Tippecanoe Valley Athletic Director Duane Burkhart has confirmed his school, Rochester and Culver Academies were three other schools invited to an informational meeting about a move to the NSC. “I’d say the school administration here at Tippecanoe Valley is considering and weighing the pros and the cons of looking into a possible move,” Burkhart said. “We’re not unhappy with the Three Rivers Conference,” Burkhart added. “It’s just something we’re taking a look at, as far as the competition level. When looking at competition level, we’re looking at all our sports across the board.” And like Wawasee, distance is a huge factor for Valley, with New Prairie once again being a bit of a problem. “By bus, we’re looking at an hour and a half to 1:40 of travel time (to get to New Prairie),” Burkhart said. Burkhart mentioned there’s a lot of factors to weigh, including his desire to continue Valley’s rivalry with Rochester, and he hopes to have a decision made by mid-October. Whatever the other schools decide, Wawasee listened, thought about it and made an easy decision. “We looked at it, but it didn’t take too long to realize we’re in the best situation right now,” Wiktorowski said. “There’s no need to change.”
