Before there was the Inter Tri-County League, there were two leagues known as the Inter-County League and the Tri-County League.

The two leagues merged in the fall of 2006 and, in August of 2017, the ITCL will be officially disbanded and two new conferences will form.

All six schools from the ITCL Blue Tier – McDonald, Mineral Ridge, Jackson-Milton, Western Reserve, Lowellville and Sebring – plus Springfield and Waterloo will form the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference.

Springfield comes from the ITCL Red Tier, while Waterloo will come from the County Division of the Portage County League.

Columbiana, Lisbon, Leetonia, East Palestine, Wellsville, Southern Local, United Local and Toronto are part of the Eastern Ohio Athletic Conference.

“It enables us to continue rivals and kind of go back to our roots of who we play all the time,” Weathersfield Local Schools Superintendent Damon Dohar said.

The furthest trip for anybody in the MVAC is Lowellville to Waterloo, a 50-minute trip. McDonald had to drive more than an hour to Wellsville, connecting the northernmost and the southernmost schools in the ITCL.

“I think it’s going to help McDonald, especially with your junior high games,” McDonald athletic director and football coach Dan Williams said. “We’re sending those kids out in the fall on those long road trips.”

Williams said the MVAC schools are in talks with John Mang, who will likely be the conference commissioner.

As for the ITCL, it ran into problems as a 16-team league. It expanded from two to three tiers and had made plans to bring in Campbell and Mathews. Ironically Mathews was in the ICL for a time before joining the Northeastern Athletic Conference. The Mustangs will remain in the NAC.

All-American Conference Commissioner Rick King said Campbell will now stay in the AAC Blue Tier and Mathews is staying in the NAC.

“We had issues a couple of years back,” Dohar said. “We thought we all solved them and everything was fine. Then kind of out of the blue, we don’t want to expand anymore. We don’t want to cross over, but we don’t want to expand.

“You can’t do both unless you want to play St. Ignatius every Week 5. Those are the teams you find. If you have an open Week 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10, there’s Mooney, Ursuline and those schools aren’t our size. St. Vincent-St. Mary has a Week 6 open this year. I don’t think we want to play them. Those are things you run into, and it was time – obviously.”

When the ITCL initially disbanded, Springfield, South Range and Crestview were seen as the odd schools out. Since Springfield has the same amount of boys as Western Reserve and a couple more than Waterloo, Mineral Ridge and McDonald, it made it a good fit for the MVAC.

“We’re happy to have Springfield join us,” said Williams, who added that South Range and Springfield will be on the Blue Devils’ football schedule this fall.

As for South Range and Crestview, they along with Cardinal Mooney, Ursuline, John F. Kennedy and Valley Christian have applied for admission in the All-American Conference, King said. Springfield applied as well, but is committed to the MVAC.

King also said Louisville, which is in the Northeastern Buckeye Conference, has shown interest in the AAC. The NBC will dissolve following the 2017-18 school year. The Leopards are talking to the Federal League and Suburban League as well.

King said there will be a meeting on April 6 of the AAC’s expansion realignment committee.

“We will take a look at the schools that have applied, make several proposals,” King said. “The superintendents will pick one of those proposals the beginning of May.”

In this ever-changing high school landscape, things may change between now and then.

“Everything seems to be changing on an every couple of days basis,” King said.

It’s almost like Ohio’s weather.