Hockey will not be added as a league sport in the Northern Lakes League when the conference realigns next school year.
With only five of its current eight members fielding hockey programs that participate in the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the NLL currently does not sponsor the sport. There had been preliminary discussion of adding hockey as an NLL sport when the league realigns with the influx of three schools that have varsity hockey teams.
The difficulty of scheduling and the issue of competitive balance, however, have shelved the proposal.
The NLL will expand for the 2023-24 school year with the addition of four schools from the Three Rivers Athletic Conference. Current NLL member Maumee will depart for the Northern Buckeye Conference.
Eight schools in the expanded league will have hockey varsity programs: Anthony Wayne, Bowling Green, Clay, Findlay, Northview, Perrysburg, Southview, and Whitmer.
NLL commissioner Richard Browne said there are no plans to revisit the hockey proposal in the immediate future.
Current NLL members Anthony Wayne, Bowling Green, Napoleon, Northview, Perrysburg, Southview, and Springfield will be joined by new NLL members Findlay, Clay, Fremont Ross, and Whitmer — which could have potentially rounded out a new NLL hockey conference.
Most of those schools currently compete in the Northwest Hockey Conference.
The majority of coaches and school officials affected by the proposal have mixed feelings about the idea.
“It is important to note that most NLL schools asked for the opinion of our hockey coaches,” Anthony Wayne athletic director John Snyder said. “Many had the opinion to not be under the NLL umbrella based on the current successful setup with the NHC and the varying level of roster size and overall skill that would exist in the NLL.”
Fremont Ross and Springfield both had club teams last season.
“It was worthy of a discussion but at this time the cons outweigh the pros,” Perrysburg athletic director Chuck Jaco said.
Keith Instone, the spokesman for the NHC, is not surprised by the NLL’s decision.
All of the hockey programs in Ohio compete in leagues separate from other sports teams at their schools.
“Hockey is different in so many ways that there is a reason schools have formed hockey-only leagues over the years,” Instone added.
Aside from the NHC, there is the Capital Hockey Conference, the Greater Cleveland High School Hockey League, Great Lakes Hockey League, Southwest Ohio High School Hockey League, the North Coast High School Hockey League, and the Ohio Scholastic Hockey League (OSHL). Other schools play as independent teams.
The biggest challenges to adding hockey as an NLL sport were when and where to play.
Northwest Ohio has four ice facilities where all 13 teams have to play: Tam-O-Shanter (Sylvania), Team Toledo Ice House (North Toledo), Slater Family Ice Arena (Bowling Green State University), and The Cube (Findlay).
“Obviously no school has a rink in their backyard,” Snyder said. “We also currently as a league do not have a relationship with ice facilities nor hockey officials.”
The benefits of adding hockey to the NLL include the centralization of the schools' athletic programs. Hockey players would be able to compete for NLL titles and honors. It could also create a greater sense of belonging to the school's athletic programs.
“The positives are that you fall in line with every other sport in the NLL,” said Northview coach Steve Elliott, who also indicated he had mixed feelings about the proposal. “We are the only sport in the NLL where there is not that alignment.”
Currently, the NHC has a total of 13 teams, but three of them (Springfield, Fremont Ross, and Lake) are club programs.
In 2011, a total of 15 teams participated in the northwest Ohio district hockey tournament. That has dropped to 10 teams.
Current NHC members St. Francis de Sales and St. John's Jesuit will be joining the Detroit-based Catholic High School League in all sports beginning in 2023-24 along with Central Catholic, St. Ursula, and Notre Dame.
St. John's and St. Francis will be competing in the Detroit-based CHSL in hockey. Officials from St. Francis and St. John's have expressed the desire to also remain in the NHC.
“It’s a good conference,” St. John's AD Bob Ronai said. “It’s great competition. It also has a great history.”
The other major issue is competitive balance. The top teams in the NHC play in the Red Division, including Northview, Bowling Green, Findlay, Anthony Wayne, and Perrysburg. Those schools have higher skill levels and overall numbers than the other NLL schools. Future league members Clay, Southview, and Whitmer play in the lower-tier NHC White Division.
The revamped NLL is going with separate divisions for some sports.
Football will be separated into large school and small school divisions. One scenario for hockey would be to place BG, Findlay, Northview, and perhaps Perrysburg or AW in one division. And Clay, Southview, and Whitmer would comprise the other division.
“Anthony Wayne and Perrysburg are already rivals in hockey and other sports, for example, and I have seen fan interest cross over [to hockey],” Instone said. “Whitmer and Southview have both been at the top of the White Division in recent years, but as they start to play more in other sports [in league play], their hockey rivalry might increase.”
The proposal to add hockey as an NLL sport could be revisited in the future, according to officials in both leagues.
“In 11 months the Northern Lakes League will look very different, and we are very excited for this new league,” Snyder said. “None of us have ever created a hockey schedule. This would all have to be built from the ground up.
“Our commissioner and athletic directors have worked tirelessly on these changes, and while these changes currently do not include hockey, this could certainly change with time.”
For now, the growth of high school hockey in the Toledo area will continue in the NHC.
“If having eight NHC member schools in the same league for other sports helps promote hockey in the region, even indirectly, then I think it is a good thing,” Instone said. “How that shakes out for the hockey community is still to be determined.”
First Published September 12, 2022, 5:14 p.m.
