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Announcement
From the GAZETTE, By Steve King, Staff Writer
YORK TWP. — It took almost three years, but Buckeye athletic director Ken Woodruff can say it was well worth the wait.
Pending approval by the Buckeye Board of Education at its regular meeting on Monday night, Buckeye will become a member of the Lorain County Conference beginning with the 2005-06 school year.
This will mark the end of an effort that started in April 2000 when Woodruff, a longtime teacher and coach at the school, was named AD.
"One of the first official things I did when I got the job was to meet with the LCC schools and try to get them to be pro-active about expanding the league," Woodruff said Thursday.
It looked like it was going to happen last year when the LCC announced it was going to expand, but the league changed its mind.
"When the LCC called Tuesday and extended us an invitation to join, it was just a total relief for me," Woodruff said. "The school has waited so many years for this."
Buckeye has eyed the LCC for some time because getting into it made sense for a number of reasons.
But it just didn't happen, and Buckeye has played the last nine years in the Mohican Area Conference.
However, when the MAC began to disintegrate — it will cease to exist after the 2003-04 school year — Woodruff knew that the school had to find something, and soon.
"When (fellow MAC member) Black River accepted the invitation to the LCC last Thursday, I started to get nervous because I knew the clock was running," Woodruff said. "I wanted to make sure we got in, too."
Why?
"We liked the competition in the MAC, but the mileage to those schools is just horrendous," Woodruff said of trips to Loudonville, Clear Fork, West Holmes and Triway. "Our average trip in the MAC is 45 miles one way. Our average trip in the LCC will be just 21 miles.
"And it will be even easier than that on our parents because many of them already work in Lorain County. Plus in the LCC, we'll have natural rivalries with Wellington and Keystone."
In addition to Wellington, Keystone and Black River, the rest of the schools in the new-look LCC will be Oberlin, Oberlin Firelands, Sheffield Brookside, Avon and Columbia Station Columbia.
However, Firelands may bolt for a new league, tentatively called the West Shore Conference. Another current LCC member, Grafton Midview, will also be in that league.
"This has been an up-and-down situation the last couple of years with us trying to get into the LCC, but now that we're in, it will be really nice," Woodruff said.
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