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Thursday, Mar. 28, 2024

Mendenhall: Leipsic checked all the boxes

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports editor

With the pending addition of Leipsic, the Northwest Conference is poised to return to full strength.

In what seemed like a whirlwind turnaround, the Leipsic Board of Education voted Monday night to leave the Blanchard Valley Conference at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year. Two days later, the NWC extended an official invitation to join and the offer was accepted the following night by the school’s extracurricular committee.

All that’s left is for the school board to give official approval, and that could happen as soon as next week.

Starting with the 2022-2023 school year, the Vikings will replace Paulding, who’s leaving the NWC to join the Green Meadows Conference.

According to NWC President Brad Mendenhall, after Paulding announced plans to leave, letters were sent to several area schools to gauge interest in replacing the Panthers and from there a meeting was set up with Leipsic, which led to the offer.

“They checked all the boxes,” Mendenhall said. “They’re interested in full membership, which would replace Paulding on the schedule. They are very similar in size as all the teams in the Northwest Conference, they have a similar repertoire of sports that they participate in and geographically they work – Lincolnview and Crestview are the outliers I suppose – but they’re very close to Bluffton and Columbus Grove is right down the road, so they’ll have a lot of close opponents.”

Leipsic has been a member of the BVC for football since 1965 and for all sports since 1971.

“It’s a very bittersweet moment,” Leipsic athletic director Gary Kreinbrink explained. “We’ve had tremendous relationships in the BVC for the past 55 years. It all came down to solidifying a conference for the athletes of Leipsic presently and for the long term, especially for football.”

Leipsic has enjoyed a good deal of football success and has qualified for the playoffs 11 straight years, while going 87-30 in that span.

There has been concern that several BVC schools will switch to 8-man football at some point in the future. In its current form, the Blanchard Valley Conference has 11 teams: Leipsic, Arcadia, Arlington, Cory-Rawson, Liberty-Benton, McComb, North Baltimore, Pandora-Gilboa, Riverdale, Van Buren and Vanlue.

In addition to the BVC, Leipsic is a member of the Putnam County League and will continue that membership after joining the NWC.

POSTED: 05/15/20 at 12:50 pm. FILED UNDER: Sports