By MARK HUBER

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The South Central Ohio League voted unanimously not to expand at its meeting Thursday held at the Miami Trace Board of Education offices.

But that isn’t an indictment against either Wilmington or Jonathan Alder, the two schools interested in joining the SCOL.

“They did not vote against the schools,” said Randy Dunlap, president of the SCOL board of control and principal at Clinton-Massie High School. “That (individual schools) never came up.”

Currently, the SCOL consists of Clinton-Massie, Hillsboro, McClain, Washington, Miami Trace, London and Madison Plains.

The high school principals of the member schools make up the SCOL’s board of control, the decision-making, voting organization for the league.

Wilmington is a member of the Fort Ancient Valley Conference.

Jonathan Alder is an independent, meaning it does not have a league affiliation.

Dunlap said some schools had issues with expansion in general and wanted to take information back to their school districts administration and communities to discuss the ideal of adding teams to the league.

“There are just some issues individual schools wanted to address with their schools before saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any individual schools,” Dunlap said.

Economics would be a large obstacle with member schools with expansion. The addition of Wilmington would mean another long road trip for northern schools London and Madison Plains while adding Alder would be costly from a fuel standpoint for the southern schools in the league.

Dunlap said he informed both Jonathan Alder and Wilmington of the league’s vote.

“We’re going to have to go back and re-think everything,” said WHS director of athletics Mike Wallace. “This is a convenient time to make a change. The FAVC is looking at alignment (with Amelia leaving). The FAVC has to move on.”

Dunlap said the expansion issue for the SCOL is not done, just pushed to the back burner.

“I think what was best for the league (SCOL) was to not come up with a decision (on expansion) right now,” Dunlap said. “That doesn’t mean it (expansion) won’t come up again. That doesn’t mean it won’t come about.”

Dunlap said the SCOL has a regularly scheduled meeting Nov. 5 prior to the fall sports banquet. “That’s a very short meeting,” he said.

However, he added, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we met again before the end of the year year to discuss it (expansion).”

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