MEDORA
Over the past 29 years, Medora High School’s sports teams haven’t competed in a conference.
If everything goes to plan, that will change this upcoming school year.
The Hornets will join Dugger Union, Cannelton, Evansville Christian, Christian Academy of Madison and Columbus Christian to form the Southern Roads Conference.
Initially, the schools plan on competing for championships in boys and girls basketball, volleyball and cross-country.
Medora athletic director Brad McCammon said that he and Cannelton A.D. Brian Garrett discussed the possibility of starting a conference before deciding it needed to happen.
“We’ve been looking for a while, and couldn’t find a conference that would either let us in or the location or school size didn’t match up,” McCammon said. “(Garrett) and I talked about it over a couple phone calls, and he sent a letter out to several of the small schools to see who was interested. We had a meeting this month in Paoli. We decided those (on board) would be the charter members, and we probably wouldn’t’ grow to more than eight teams.”
Garrett will be the president of the conference, McCammon will work as vice president and Dugger Union’s Steve Hall of Dugger Union will serve a secretary-treasurer.
McCammon said that while the teams will have lots of travel, it doesn’t significantly alter the current schedules for the teams.
“We travel so much anyways that I liken us to Notre Dame Football: We will play anywhere,” he said. “We already go over to Dugger and Cannelton and play Columbus Christian.”
The Hornets were most recently members of the Three Rivers Athletic Conference, which folded in 1989. The conference was made up of Cannelton, Graceland Christian, Evansville Day, Medora and New Harmony.
“This gives the kids an opportunity to be a part of a conference and earn some honors,” McCammon said. “It gives the kids something tangible to achieve. Hopefully it will help attendance at schools, and encourage involvement with the kids. It’s a win-win situation with a small conference. Hopefully it’s a positive step in the right direction.
McCammon said that Medora plans to host conference tournaments for both basketball and volleyball.
The involved schools plan on meeting again April 4 to iron out more of the fine details in hopes of jump starting the conference for 2018-19.