NE8Fan Posted January 6, 2021 Share Posted January 6, 2021 This what I would like to see as a Bellmont fan. New NE8 Angola 4A Columbia City 4A Dekalb 4A East Noble 4A Hun North 4A Leo 4A New Haven 4A West Noble 3A New ACAC now called the Eastern Plains Conference: Adams Central 1A Bluffton 2A Bellmont 3A Heritage 3A Jay Co 4A Norwell 3A South Adams 1A Woodlan 2A ACAC boots Southern Wells. Have heard they will be going into the second year in a row without a varsity team. Will make the ACAC much more of a competitvive conference where someone other than SA or AC win it every year. Will give Norwell a chance for some championships. And maybe we can win some games finally! NE8 adds Angola and West Noble 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purdue Pete Posted January 6, 2021 Share Posted January 6, 2021 The trip to Jay Co isn’t much better than the trip to EN (for Norwell) but overall would be much better travel wise for parents and players (all sports MS and HS). The argument that “playing up” leads to more tournament success is valid. But then again 3A Norwell ran the 4A gauntlet this year in the NE8 and still got bounced by Concordia (who ran the 5A/6A gauntlet). Once Norwell moves up to 4a next year the realignment starts to lose some appeal. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NEIFootballGuy Posted January 7, 2021 Share Posted January 7, 2021 Angola and WN are both in the NECC, not the ACAC. Would be very good for Angola, and I think they would be competitive in most sports. WN would struggle except for a few sports, and if you're talking football, they would struggle mightily. Not a knock on them, just would be a drastic change of pace. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basementbias Posted January 7, 2021 Share Posted January 7, 2021 On 1/6/2021 at 10:10 AM, NE8Fan said: This what I would like to see as a Bellmont fan. New NE8 Angola 4A Columbia City 4A Dekalb 4A East Noble 4A Hun North 4A Leo 4A New Haven 4A West Noble 3A New ACAC now called the Eastern Plains Conference: Adams Central 1A Bluffton 2A Bellmont 3A Heritage 3A Jay Co 4A Norwell 3A South Adams 1A Woodlan 2A ACAC boots Southern Wells. Have heard they will be going into the second year in a row without a varsity team. Will make the ACAC much more of a competitvive conference where someone other than SA or AC win it every year. Will give Norwell a chance for some championships. And maybe we can win some games finally! NE8 adds Angola and West Noble Hope Southern Wells can turn it around. As an AC fan, I've given up on the Norwell & Bellmont just joining idea (would make wrestling seeding a lot easier) and would rather just have both on the schedule. WEEK Opponent 1. Bellmont 2. Norwell 3. Eastside/Monroe Central/Crestview OH/Parkway OH 4. Heritage 5. Jay County 6. South Adams 7. Southern Wells (if not varsity) then take one that doesn't end up week 3 8. Bluffton 9. Woodlan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prospect Posted January 7, 2021 Share Posted January 7, 2021 Hard to argue with how nicely Angola would fit in the NE8 other than a couple long drives. I would have loved to see Angola's last couple regional teams play some NE8 competitive like EN or Leo. I don't think West Noble would be very competitive as @NEIFootballGuy stated above. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayor of Peterson Posted January 14, 2021 Share Posted January 14, 2021 I do not see Bellmont or Norwell willingly moving to the ACAC in all sports. They have a # of other sports that have long traditions in & are highly successful in the NE8 even though they are the 2 smallest schools in the conference. I think an easy short term football fix for both conferences would have Bellmont take Southern Wells place in the ACAC in FB only for a few years & then re-evaluate where those programs are. Coach Hall is going to do a great job building the Bellmont program back up, but it is tough playing in the NE8 with the difference in enrollment numbers. He could build momentum by competing most weeks in ACAC & will get #s up by winning some games. You have better chance of getting kids out if they are confident that they can compete. Otherwise guys who should/could play multi-sports will unfortunately just focus on their favorite other sport. The benefit to other NE8 schools is that they can pick up a game outside conference if they want a challenge for stronger teams (Penn vs EN) or the lower end teams can seek a winnable game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingHigh Posted January 15, 2021 Share Posted January 15, 2021 I’m sure Bellmont would fair much better as a rebuild in the ACAC. Coach Hall will do a solid job building numbers and tradition regardless of conference, though. I believe 2021 is the final year Bellmont is playing AC (not AC’s decision according to my sources), as I believe Bellmont is picking up Heritage for week 1 to replace AC. Probably a good move for Bellmont to have a better shot at picking up a win early in the season, at least in the short term, but I’m not a fan of the county schools not playing each other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basementbias Posted January 15, 2021 Share Posted January 15, 2021 4 hours ago, FlyingHigh said: I’m sure Bellmont would fair much better as a rebuild in the ACAC. Coach Hall will do a solid job building numbers and tradition regardless of conference, though. I believe 2021 is the final year Bellmont is playing AC (not AC’s decision according to my sources), as I believe Bellmont is picking up Heritage for week 1 to replace AC. Probably a good move for Bellmont to have a better shot at picking up a win early in the season, at least in the short term, but I’m not a fan of the county schools not playing each other. That is horrible! We went 40 years without it and finally got it back. Plus with the 2 schools sharing a youth league, it made it nice to see those guys get a shot to play each other again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purdue Pete Posted January 16, 2021 Share Posted January 16, 2021 On 1/14/2021 at 12:28 AM, Mayor of Peterson said: I do not see Bellmont or Norwell willingly moving to the ACAC in all sports. They have a # of other sports that have long traditions in & are highly successful in the NE8 even though they are the 2 smallest schools in the conference. I think an easy short term football fix for both conferences would have Bellmont take Southern Wells place in the ACAC in FB only for a few years & then re-evaluate where those programs are. Coach Hall is going to do a great job building the Bellmont program back up, but it is tough playing in the NE8 with the difference in enrollment numbers. He could build momentum by competing most weeks in ACAC & will get #s up by winning some games. You have better chance of getting kids out if they are confident that they can compete. Otherwise guys who should/could play multi-sports will unfortunately just focus on their favorite other sport. The benefit to other NE8 schools is that they can pick up a game outside conference if they want a challenge for stronger teams (Penn vs EN) or the lower end teams can seek a winnable game. Good post. The realignment would help the rebuild. Building a program is so tough when u only got 12 MS players coming out... then go take those 24 MS players up to East Noble and Leo who have 45 per grade on the sideline. Gotta find a stud 5th / 6th grade class and invest heavily in them. Build it up from the bottom. Not a short process. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basementbias Posted January 19, 2021 Share Posted January 19, 2021 On 1/16/2021 at 2:20 PM, Purdue Pete said: Good post. The realignment would help the rebuild. Building a program is so tough when u only got 12 MS players coming out... then go take those 24 MS players up to East Noble and Leo who have 45 per grade on the sideline. Gotta find a stud 5th / 6th grade class and invest heavily in them. Build it up from the bottom. Not a short process. It's a community problem plain and simple. They have had number issues for our youth league. The last couple of years it's improved and my belief is that we've had a stable group with familiar coaches the kids get to know and want to play for. I think that is what Coach Hall is starting to accomplish at all levels for Bellmont. The demographics of the school are changing it seems. A lot more of the youth are kids that moved into town. Meanwhile, the AC side has kids that are the 3rd generation from families playing. One coach for the Bellmont youth side talked about his trips to the elementary schools for JA (before they combined in one building) and how 2 parent households were rare. Even in the 2 parent households, it was even rarer to have it not be a step parent as one of the 2 parents. Plus the best Bellmont youth player from 2017 ended up playing for AC as a Frosh this past year. Turns out he was one of those from that rare 2 parent household that both were his biological parents. What caused them to send him to AC, I do not know, but can't help thinking it could have been the school culture. Probably is another reason that it appears AC will be moving up to 2A due to enrollment. I'm hoping we can do something in the spring for the youth league, as we couldn't hold our season in the fall due to the Bellmont outbreak in August/Sept time frame. I really hope that doesn't hurt the numbers on the Bellmont side that we started to get in the right direction. The big problem will be determining if we can get it in between when wrestling ends (not sure it really ever does at Bellmont) and baseball begins (the 2nd crown jewel). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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