Challenges ahead for the PCL revival committee

The movement to revive the Portage County League, although still in its infancy, would seem to have the wind at its back.

• There is growing county-wide support to bring back the league which housed, at one time or another, most of the county’s high schools from its inception in 1922 to its disbanding in 2005.

• The league as it was, and as it would be if it re-forms, makes perfect geographical and cultural sense.

• The 10 schools that comprised the PCL at the time it disbanded and was absorbed into the new Portage Trail Conference — Crestwood, Field, Garfield, Mogadore, Rootstown, Southeast, Streetsboro, Waterloo, Windham and Woodridge — shared a long history together that intertwined communities and generations of families.

In short, the Portage County League was woven deeply into the fabric of the county it represented — and in many ways it still is, even in absentia.

But even with all those factors in their favor, Gregg Isler, who is serving as acting league commissioner for the proposed new PCL, along with assistant commissioners Tom Nader and Brittany Dye, are well aware that convincing superintendents, athletic directors and school boards why it’s a good idea to leave their current leagues and start a new one could be a tough sell.

“As much as we all want this to work for all of the districts,” Isler said, “it is important to understand that challenges exist, otherwise the league would not have reached this point in time. I believe more discussions centered around those challenges, with an understanding of the educational opportunities possible, increase the chances of success.

“The potential roadblocks are different for each district. Those potential differences are why we are attempting to sit down and discuss the wants/needs of each district with an understanding of what is the required consensus of a league foundation.”

At the top of the “challenges” list is enrollment. Schools are constantly jockeying for the league affiliation that best fits their school size, the idea being that, at the very least, similar enrollment numbers give a school’s sports teams a fighting chance to be successful. And, over time, the shifting sands of demographics created enrollment disparities that, in the minds of decision-makers at schools throughout Portage County, made certain league affiliations untenable for their athletic departments.

In fact, Isler himself was in that very position when, as superintendent at Windham, he was part of the group that decided it was in his alma mater’s best interests to leave the PTC for the Northeastern Athletic Conference in 2013.

“It was hard to leave the league because the traditions, the rivalries and the competition would never be the same,” he said, “but our declining enrollment left us little choice.”

As it stands now, Windham is among the 11 schools on the early list to form a revived Portage County League, along with Crestwood, Field, Garfield, Mogadore, Lake Center Christian, Ravenna, Rootstown, Southeast, Springfield and Waterloo.

“The current list of schools for a revised PCL share enough characteristics that it was possible they could be clustered together without extreme outliers,” Isler said.

After all, there’s more to league cohesion than enrollment numbers.

“The list of schools that received our initial announcement (last month) was established early in our committee discussions,” Nader said. “We felt that the list we established for a potentially revived league was one that found an equal balance between proximity, enrollment size and competitive balance.”

Conspicuous by their absence on the list are Streetsboro and Woodridge, both of which were longtime members of the PCL (and later the PTC). Both currently are members of the Metro Athletic Conference and are perfect examples of those shifting enrollment sands.

“In our committee meetings, we assessed that both Streetsboro and Woodridge were growing communities with larger enrollment numbers,” Dye said. “To our knowledge, they were happy with their place in the MAC. We certainly respect both schools and appreciate everything they brought to the PCL.”

Said Nader: “Our committee has deep respect for both Streetsboro and Woodridge. Their absence from our list of schools was certainly not intended to be rude in any way. We felt that Streetsboro and Woodridge were the two schools with the highest likelihood of continued enrollment growth, which could potentially create pressure points for the (new) league and its proposed long-term sustainability.”

Isler, who played sports in the PCL along with Nader (Rootstown) and Dye (Crestwood), understands why many would like to see a revived Portage County League that includes the Rockets and Bulldogs.

“Both Streetsboro and Woodridge were early members of the PCL,” he said. “But at this point in time, their growth in numbers makes it challenging to find how and where they might fit relative to the other districts.”

While Streetsboro and Woodridge are stark examples of why size matters in league affiliation, there are other hurdles to clear before a revived PCL can become a reality. One of those is comfort; Windham, for instance, has already been in the Northeastern Athletic Conference eight years. Waterloo, meanwhile, just finished its fourth year in the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference — meaning, for the first time, an entire graduating class went through the school having never competed in a league with other Portage County schools.

“There are probably many roadblocks that we don’t even know about yet, to be honest,” Nader said. “Until we get an opportunity to speak with the districts in a formal but conversational setting, it would be difficult to estimate what those are yet. I suspect that one of the biggest roadblocks will simply be the change in general. Just as it was probably difficult for the schools to leave the Portage Trail Conference in the first place, there will be the same difficult reasons to make another change.

“We feel, though, that this change back would set up the districts for a long-term solution for peak-level athletic and academic excellence.”

Indeed, with Portage County’s 12 high schools now scattered among six different leagues stretching across several counties, getting most of them back together in one league could be akin to herding cats. What’s important to one school, quite frankly, may be irrelevant to another. And on and on and on.

“Potential roadblocks are difficult to identify at the moment, but I think they’ll be different for each district,” Dye said. “That is the beauty of creating this with Gregg and Tom. We want to customize this to our communities. We are here to learn what schools want and need. Instead of joining an existing conference that already has standards, let’s set our own standards and create what suits our needs.”

League-jumping can be wildly unpopular and cause emotions to run high in a community. With the final decision in any school district being made by a select few, many people — who pay taxes to that district and send their kids there — feel as if their voice not only wasn’t heard but wouldn’t have mattered if it was.

It’s an unenviable position for any school leader trying to make decisions that are in the best interests of the student-athletes they serve.

“I don’t blame any district for the choices that had to be made,” Dye said. “Their hands were forced to do what they had to do for their respective districts. I think in the 16 years since the PCL has disbanded, so many things have changed like enrollment, finances and competitive balance. The current league situations are a result of people trying to do the right thing for their school.”

And the right thing, according to the committee, is to bring back a revised Portage County League and all that it would offer to its member schools and communities.

“Over time, each district has been forced to make choices based on wants and needs,” Isler said. “Moving forward, the potential for rivalries and additional fan support, along with the educational base of the revised league, will be very important.”

To be sure, the movement to create a new PCL faces a long road ahead. After all, there are a lot of influential hearts and minds that have to be convinced that it will work and why it’s in the best interests of their respective schools. But the three committee members have made it clear they’re in it for the long haul.

“We are optimistic and we have hope,” Nader said, “but we also know that we will face challenges. I guess since our committee is comprised of former athletes, challenges are not something that will discourage us.”