Tiffin Calvert will join TAAC in 2014

5/14/2013
BY STEVE JUNGA
BLADE SPORTS WRITER

Tiffin Calvert has been accepted as the ninth full-time member of the Toledo Area Athletic Conference, and will begin competing in boys and girls sports in the conference during the 2014-15 school year.

TAAC commissioner Rick Kaifas made the announcement Monday following a meeting of conference athletic directors and Calvert AD Scott Brickner.

“We have put to rest all the rumors of a merger that had been going around,” Kaifas said. “We are very happy with the introduction of Tiffin Calvert into the TAAC, and feel they will be a worthy opponent in all sports, and also provide academic excellence to our conference. The vote was unanimous to accept them.”

Kaifas said that the TAAC will now look to add a 10th full member and that that school must offer football.

“Our ultimate goal is to add a 10th school,” Kaifas said. “That way, scheduling becomes a lot less tedious for all the schools.”

The commissioner said that schools interested in joining the TAAC should contact conference president Tim Erickson, the AD at Ottawa Hills, to apply for membership.

Calvert, a private Catholic school, is currently a member of the Midland Athletic League, which will disband after the 2013-14 school year; five member schools have already announced departures to other leagues.

Calvert, which does have football, joins the TAAC’s current full-time alignment of Cardinal Stritch, Danbury, Emmanuel Christian, Gibsonburg, Maumee Valley, Northwood, Ottawa Hills, and Toledo Christian.

Emmanuel Christian and Maumee Valley do not have football programs, but those voids have been filled in recent years by Edon and Hilltop.

Edon and Hilltop are members of the Buckeye Border Conference and play only football in the TAAC.

The MAL is currently a 12-school alignment. But, beginning in 2014-15, Hopewell-Loudon and North Baltimore will enter the Blanchard Valley Conference, and Carey, Mohawk, and Seneca East will enter the Northern 10 Athletic Conference.

Those departures would have left the MAL with just seven schools, three of which offered football — Calvert, Fremont St. Joseph, and Lakota. The nonfootball members are Bettsville, Fostoria St. Wendelin, New Riegel, and Old Fort.

In March, Kaifas revealed that the TAAC athletic directors — after having voted not to expand — reconvened and took a vote to approve the addition of five MAL schools plus Sandusky St. Mary of the Sandusky Bay Conference.

That MAL group included Calvert, St. Joseph, Lakota, New Riegel, and Old Fort, a change that would have given the TAAC 14 full-time members, 12 that played football.

This potential merger stalled, however, because those six schools invited to join the TAAC had already begun working to form the Sandusky River League. The six and St. Wendelin agreed to continue with their SRL plans instead.

Calvert is the first school in that mix to abandon the SRL plan, which now includes just three schools with football programs.

Contact Steve Junga at:

sjunga@theblade.com,

or 419-724-6461 or on

Twitter@JungaBlade.