Frozen Tundra

@DanteEstonia What’s your opinion on ten team conferences in which you play everyone and don’t have non-conference games? Like it? Dislike it?

They were somehow able to make it work for four years but I’m sure each year provides a new challenge due to the fluidity of the scheduling throughout the state.

Thought I’d post this article from the Seymour newspaper. http://www.tribtown.com/2021/05/14/three_local_conferences_to_have_different_look_in_fall-3/?fbclid=IwAR2Uoava93zYpYlYU-8n55TYDwdi-vp7sgkPI7KkgH9Ud9qdFCg08X8NC8Y The two main points as it relates to the HHC are: 1. Madison applied for membership to the Mid-Southern Conference. With Clarksville leaving the conference at the end of the school year, the MSC will be down to eight football schools (Brownstown Central, Charlestown, Corydon Central, Eastern (Pekin), North Harrison, Salem, Scottsburg, and Silver Creek). The MSC decided to put off a decision on Madison for now. It’ll be interesting to see how the MSC votes on Madison when the time comes. I can’t imagine it’s easy to play an eight game conference schedule in football. However, there’s no rule you have to play every team in your conference. We’ll see what happens. 2. No schools applied for membership to the HHC. Silver Creek and Bloomington North have been mentioned as either having interest or being the favorite to take Madison’s place. However, it looks to be hearsay. Maybe that will change down the road but, for now, the HHC is a seven-school conference.

Crazy to think Steve Cooley is now the longest-tenured coach in the HHC. He’ll only be in his fifth season.

As much as I hate to compliment our rival, I have to agree. They have such a good athletic program and there’s a lot of value to the school overall.

What’s the reasoning for why they wanted separation?

Yeah but Columbus North is the Bull Dogs (two words) so there’s that. 😂

Interesting. I had seen the student population had shrunk greatly over the last ten years but I didn’t realize they were considering going away from the three-school set-up.

What do you mean? I guess I’m out of the loop on this one.

Maybe. I’m surprised they didn’t try to apply. Conference Indiana feels like it’s on shaky ground. Maybe Columbus North has a lot of power within the conference. I don’t know.

It’s just a consequence of two teams being in the same conference. Didn’t bother me one bit.

Because we’re apparently supposed to treat it like collegiate sports where all the best teams form power conferences. I figured the “East needs to leave the HHC” talks would end after a state title in 2013 but they didn’t. Kept hearing how we only won because Cathedral was moved up to 5A due to the success factor. So, when we beat them en route to a 5A state title back in 2017, I thought the talks would end. They didn’t. It died down a little but never went away. We’re used to it with the Columbus North crowd. They never shut up about it and never will. As for everyone else, not sure what else we need to do to prove that the HHC doesn’t hurt our ability to win state titles. Would I like the HHC to be better? Definitely. I do actually like the conference so I’m not mad that we’re still in it. There are other sports besides football and it’s not like we dominate the conference in every sport. Floyd Central is generally the best all-around. That being said, I was in favor of East trying to get into the Mid-State Conference a few years back because it felt like a good fit. However, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe we’ll have other opportunities to leave in the future and that’s fine. I just don’t think it’s necessary to leave. Everyone acts like we should be trying to get into this conference or that conference like it’s such an easy thing to do, but there are so many factors involved in a decision like that. First of all, a conference actually has to have an opening. On our side of things, travel times, cost, and conference sustainability are just some of the factors we would have to consider as to whether or not a move is feasible. But I go back to this question, why do we NEED to leave? Short answer: we don’t.

They already tried breaking away from Conference Indiana to join the Mid-State Conference, much to the surprise of a lot of folks. I’d be curious to know if they’d even be interested in returning to the HHC.

They already tried. They applied to be the eighth team in the Mid-State Conference but Perry Meridian was chosen instead.

My whole confusion right now is trying to determine whether my Columbus East Olympians are staying in 6A or moving back to 5A. When the IHSAA said points earned through the tournament success factor from the last two years will still be applied, does that also mean the teams that were moved up due to tournament success but failed to garner enough points to remain playing up will move back down? If anyone with full knowledge of the IHSAA’s ruling could clear that up for me, I’d greatly appreciate it.

If Columbus East and FW Snider are falling back to 5A then who will be replacing them in 6A?

The IHSAA needs to hurry up and release the new enrollment figures. Don’t they know I have some sensible sectional alignment predictions to get wrong?

I don’t like saying it. I try to be respectful on here because I truly do love this conference. Overall, I think it’s a great conference and I enjoyed competing against the other schools as an athlete and as a fan. However, the football side of things is rough and I hate that nothing has changed in 15+ years. Obviously I like that East is the top dog year after year but I’d also like to be able to see the other schools find success in the state tournament. I’d like to hear the Hoosier Hills Conference spoken about positively by other folks throughout the state. I get tired of hearing how “East is never tested because they play in a trash conference”. Tired of getting the Gonzaga treatment.

Madison leaving won’t change things. East leaving wouldn’t have changed things. The HHC is annually one of the weakest big school conferences. We’ll see what East does without Gaddis. Maybe they decline. However, the other six schools have got to find a way to improve their situations. It can’t really be due to the lack of athletes can it? Maybe for Jennings County or Seymour but not for the Louisville area schools.

Everyone aside from East. The other six schools are consistently in the bottom half of their classes. Sometimes they get ranked because they have a good record due to being the second best team in the HHC but, once they play another team outside of the HHC in the upper half of their classification, they lose.

It’s not just a Madison problem...

Nah I’m not going to beat a dead horse. We all know it’s not where it needs to be football-wise.

Definitely. I don’t know what the terms were when this game was set up, but I hope that it’s a home and home series at the very least. I’d love to see it continue beyond that though. Not to crap on the HHC, but we needed a good, quality opponent at the end of the season to get us ready for the tournament.

Just noticed Columbus East finally found themselves a week 7 opponent and I am very pleased with who it is. There were less than a handful of quality opponents available but there were two I really thought would be best: Chatard and Louisville Male. Glad we landed one of them. It’ll be the first meeting between the two schools since the 1979 regional championship in which East won 20-13. There was no semistate championship round back then so East would go on to defeat Hobart in the state championship the following week. What do you think about this match-up @Lysander?

There were several errors on the site in regards to coaching changes. I don’t think John put them on there intentionally. My guess is he had a programming error or something.