When Harding High School opened its doors in the fall of 1973, it triggered a change within the city.
Gone was the Fort Wayne City Series, the league that brought together the high schools in the city limits since 1965, and the Summit Athletic Conference was born, 10 schools – public and private – from throughout the Summit City.
Fifty-three years later, the SAC is on borrowed time.
Even over half a century, not much has changed in terms of conference membership. Elmhurst closed its doors in 2010 and Harding one year later. In 2015, Carroll and Homestead joined the league as partial members – football and basketball only – to bring the numbers of schools back up to 10.
But glancing around at the ever-changing landscape of high school sports in northeast Indiana, it is obvious that the SAC as we old timers remember it will soon disappear.
Concordia Lutheran has made it public that it will move to the Allen County Athletic Conference beginning in 2027. Meanwhile, Carroll and Homestead are entertaining the possibility of going independent with its football and basketball programs like the rest of its sports already are.
Bishop Dwenger football coach Jason Garrett did not mince words when asked about potential independence for his program by WANE-15 last week.
“Us going independent is a creative and thoughtful thing that we might consider,” Garrett said. “For us as a private school, as well as Concordia and Bishop Luers, there may be some unique opportunities (in scheduling).”
For decades, the SAC just made sense. There were no real outliers in terms of school size – no huge enrollments and no tiny enrollments. Ebbs and flows happened, but for years we took for granted the fact that each year the athletic programs around the city would compete for bragging rights.
The Victory Bell, awarded to the conference winner in football, was a BIG deal.
Now? Not so much.
There is no one reason why the SAC is on the brink of dissolution. When Carroll and Homestead were admitted into the league in 2015, it was mutually beneficial. The two programs needed homes for their football and basketball programs after they were effectively booked from the Northeast Hoosier Conference. On the other side, the eight-team SAC saw the opportunity to get back to 10 schools and also tap into the financial benefits of two outlying schools that filled the stands.
The SAC’s split-gate rule is unique and a positive for some, a huge detriment to others. The attendance gate collected at any conference game, no matter who the host is, is split evenly between both competing teams. The rule is designed to try and share the income across all schools.
That was fine when the majority of the schools were in the same school system (Fort Wayne Community Schools), and money in athletics wasn’t as lucrative as it is today.
But now, the aesthetic of the rule is that it robs the schools who bring in big attendance numbers to help out the schools where attendance is lacking.
For instance, if Carroll brings in 5,000 people to a football game, while South Side brings in 250 as the visitor, Carroll must split the gate despite it having 95 percent of the fans.
It helps South Side and hurts Carroll.
If Bishop Dwenger knows it can bring in 1,500 visiting fans if it hosts emerging rival Roncalli instead of Wayne, who can blame the Saints? Particularly if that game is a more competitive challenge?
Many like to blame Carroll and Homestead. After all, things were just fine before the pair were added, right? Well, not entirely. The merging of private and public has always been a tenuous one in the SAC, particularly as athletics have taken on a more important role in a school’s identity. Power programs want to compete for championships, and a full conference schedule may not be the best way to prepare for that.
Conversely, programs that are struggled aren’t being helped by getting ‘running clock’d’ by teams vastly superior than them. Elmhurst and Snider did not play for a time in the 2000s purely for this reason. No one at the time was pointing to Snider as the problem back then, and no one should point to Carroll and Homestead now.
Truth be told, the city’s high schools have largely outgrown the SAC.
We made the case for Carroll and Homestead.
Snider? With brand-new Russ Isaacs Stadium about to open, the Panthers would like nothing more than to host some huge showdowns with Penn, Carmel and other out-of-area rivals on a rotational home-and-home basis.
Bishop Dwenger? Who wouldn’t want to see the Saints play Roncalli, Cathedral, Chatard and other private schools every regular season?
It is OK to feel sorry for the schools who could potentially be left behind. Money drives a lot of things, even high school athletics. The allure of more gate money and more competitive schedules is a tough combination to overcome. But it is the lay of the land everywhere, not just in northeast Indiana.
So when you’re taking an SAC game in this fall, make sure you glance around and take it all in. The fractures are becoming more numerous, and an exit is coming from one of the founding members.
But that cannot and will not erase our memories of what 53 years has looked like with the SAC.
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