A look back at the South Central

(Continued from last week.)

After the demise of the SCOL, Hillsboro applied and was granted membership in the Southern Buckeye Athletic Conference (SBC), comprised, mostly, of Clermont and Brown County schools such as Williamsburg, Western Brown, New Richmond, Bethel Tate, Felicity Franklin, Clermont Northeastern, Batavia, etc.

This was a nice league. The people from the various schools in the league were very amiable and friendly. There were very few problems with poor sportsmanship, vandalism or rowdy behavior.

The chief problem was that, compared to McClain, Washington C.H., Wilmington, Miami Trace and Circleville, these teams just did not travel well. I remember crucial league basketball games on the Hillsboro court, when the league opponent would bring 30 or 35 fans. Not even all the parents showed up!

I remember going to a league football game at one of these schools on a beautiful football night in October. Hillsboro, the visiting team, took about 700 to 800 fans.

The home team might have had about 125 people in the stands. It was disheartening. It was also very costly, because these schools depend upon gate receipts for basketball and football to finance all the so-called “minor” sports.

Additionally, the strength of the league was questionable, at best.

Hillsboro, who had won one outright South Central Ohio League championship in 64 years (and had been in a three-way tie for another title) completely dominated the SBC in football.

Hillsboro, the largest school in the league in enrollment, was only a few students larger than Western Brown.

(Western Brown is now larger than Hillsboro.)

In 1992, Coach Jim Horne’s Indian squad had a perfect regular season – 10 consecutive weeks in the winner’s circle. But All-Ohio defensive standouts Sean Longstreth and J.D. Wagoner had graduated along with the talented backfield combination of Rodney Captain and Chad Price and the senior leadership of Jason Spruance, James Jones and Matt Kruse.

Still, the 1993 Indians had some very good players, including senior quarterback Chad Downing and fullback Brad Beatty, a senior who averaged almost eight yards per carry in 1992.

New Richmond, Western Brown and Bethel-Tate appeared to be the league favorites, along with Hillsboro.

It is difficult to know just how good your team really is until you go up against a few very outstanding teams. The Indians, after losing a crucial league game to Bethel-Tate, won their last six games, including a classic 19-18 thriller at New Richmond to capture the Southern Buckeye Conference championship.

The final SBC standings for the 1993 football season were:

Hillsboro 8-2, 5-1

Bethel Tate 7-3, 4-2

Western Brown 6-4, 4-2

New Richmond 6-4, 3-3

Williamsburg 5-5, 3-3

Blanchester 4-6, 2-4

CNE 0-6, 0-10.

The SBC had rejected McClain. It may be that the 17 miles from Hillsboro to Greenfield just made the trip too long. It could be that a few of the decision-makers feared that McClain would dominate the league in basketball.

I’m not sure whether that entered into the decision or not. But McClain always took anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 faithful supporters with them wherever they played. That couldn’t have hurt the athletic fund too much.

(Continued next week.)

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