A look back at the South Central

(Continued from last week.)

When the South Central Ohio League officially disbanded at the end of the 1992-93 school year, all the members went their separate ways. The SCOL had been a great league for 63 years, but now it was history.

Many situations were difficult to understand. Like Miami Trace, who came into the SCOL in 1960 after the consolidation of all the small schools of Fayette County. Trace played a strictly reserve football schedule the first year, then started with a varsity schedule. They very quickly assumed domination of the football league, winning either outright championships or at least sharing the championship for 15 of the next 20 years.

Did they have better athletes than anyone else in the league? I doubt it. Some years, perhaps, they did. But not every year. Did they have better coaching? Probably some years they did. Other years, they did not. But they kept on winning.

Trace got every rural student in Fayette County, except for a few students just north of Greenfield, who had always attended McClain. They came right up to the Washington C.H. corporation line. There was little way for the WCH enrollment to grow unless they started building highrises.

Kenneth Baker lived just outside of Leesburg. One of his daughters was homecoming queen at Miami Trace. He said there were six high schools that were closer to where he lived than Miami Trace. She (and a lot of other rural children) still had to ride a school bus to Miami Trace every morning.

One of the outcomes of consolidation in rural areas has been unbelievably long bus rides, with children boarding a school bus well before daylight and riding for hours on narrow township roads.

In the early 1970s, I became aware of a number of students in Highland County riding a school bus 37 miles – one way – to get to school. I think that is asinine, and if my children had to ride that far, I would move.

At any rate, Trace became almost totally dominant in football.

Another thing that has always been difficult for me to understand is what happened to McClain football.

In the 1940s and 1950s, McClain dominated the football league, winning titles in 1944, 1945, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1958 (sharing the ’58 championship), 1959 and 1960. The Tigers had some really awesome teams back then.

In 1959, they beat the winner of the Columbus City League. They could compete with anybody. They haven’t won an SCOL championship since. It has been well over 50 years. I have heard some rather far-fetched explanations for that. None of them ever made much sense to me, but maybe I’m a little
slow.

Hillsboro won the SCOL football title in 1930, with a guy named “Big” Brown (and others). It was their only outright SCOL championship. They did win a share of the league championship in 1988, when three of the five member teams tied with 3-1 league records. Nineteen times in the life of the SCOL (up until 1993), the Indians were first in war, first in peace and last in the SCOL. I don’t know how to explain that. Perhaps the reader will.

In 1938, Hillsboro defeated McClain in basketball, in tournament play, with Bud Stanforth scoring 19 points. The score was 36-35. It was 10 years before the Tribe won another game over the McClain Tigers. During those 10 years, counting tournament play, McClain defeated the Indians 23 consecutive
times.

Hillsboro’s outstanding team of 1948, featuring Bill Jenicke, J.L. Davis, John Rhude, Bill “Shorty” Long and Owen Lyle, finally broke the string when they downed the Tigers at Hillsboro.

(Continued next week.)

Bob Patton is a Highland County sports historian and a contributing writer to The Highland County Press.