The Allen County Athletic Conference (ACAC) is a seven-member
Indiana High School Athletic Association
The Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) is the arbiter of interscholastic competition among public and private high schools in the U.S. state of Indiana. It monitors a system that divides athletically-competing high schools in Indiana ...
(IHSAA)
conference
A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic.
Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main p ...
. While all of its charter schools are and were located in
Allen County, it also has member schools from
Adams,
Jay
A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian m ...
, and
Wells
Wells most commonly refers to:
* Wells, Somerset, a cathedral city in Somerset, England
* Well, an excavation or structure created in the ground
* Wells (name)
Wells may also refer to:
Places Canada
*Wells, British Columbia
England
* Wells ...
counties. The ACAC, along with the
Porter County Conference
The Porter County Conference (PCC) is an athletic conference made up of eight Indiana high schools. Five of the eight schools are within Porter County, Indiana. The three remaining are in LaPorte County.
The PCC was originally formed in 1933, as ...
, are the only two
county conferences left in existence.
History
The Allen County Athletic Conference began with nine schools in
Allen County in 1956. The schools were smaller, rural schools, with the exception of Elmhurst, the sole
Fort Wayne
Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...
school that wasn't included in the
Fort Wayne City Series. The conference was hit hard by consolidation, and the nine original schools were down to four by the 1968 season (and two of those were new consolidations). The conference responded by going outside county borders by admitting Norwell (itself a newly consolidated school) in 1967, followed by Adams Central, Churubusco, and Eastside in 1968. The rebooted conference now expanded well outside of the Allen County footprint, including schools from
Adams,
DeKalb DeKalb or De Kalb may refer to:
People
* Baron Johann de Kalb (1721–1780), major general in the American Revolutionary War
Places Municipalities in the United States
* DeKalb, Illinois, the largest city in the United States named DeKalb
**DeKal ...
,
Wells
Wells most commonly refers to:
* Wells, Somerset, a cathedral city in Somerset, England
* Well, an excavation or structure created in the ground
* Wells (name)
Wells may also refer to:
Places Canada
*Wells, British Columbia
England
* Wells ...
, and
Whitley counties. All of the schools now sponsored football, and competition in that sport began in 1969.
The conference went to a two division format in 1971 with the addition of new school
Homestead
Homestead may refer to:
*Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses
*Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres
*Homestead principle, a legal concept th ...
and
Southern Wells. That format ended in 1975, as Homestead left for the
Northeastern Indiana Athletic Conference The Northeastern Indiana Athletic Conference was an IHSAA-Sanctioned Athletic Conference from 1927 to 1988.
Former members
Membership timeline Membership timeline
DateFormat = yyyy
ImageSize = width:750 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = ...
, followed by Eastside leaving for the
Northeast Corner Conference in 1980. The breakup of the NEIAC in 1989 led to a wide-scale realignment of conferences in Northeast Indiana, as schools looked to realign themselves with rivals of similar enrolments. The ACAC became the home for mid-sized schools, while the Northeast Corner housed small schools, and the newly formed
Northeast Hoosier Conference
An eight-member IHSAA-Sanctioned Athletic Conference within the Northeastern Indiana counties of Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, Wells, and Whitley. The conference was started in 1989 as the Northeast Hoosier Conference when six sc ...
became the stable for the largest non-Fort Wayne schools. Carroll and Norwell left that year for the NEHC, while Churubusco left for the NECC. They were replaced by NEIAC schools Bluffton and South Adams. Garrett, becoming too large for the Northeast Corner, moved to the Allen County league in 2005.
Jay County joined the conference beginning with the 2014-15 school year. However, the conference shrank down to seven schools in 2015, as Garrett moved to the
Northeast Corner Conference in 2014, and Leo joined six of the eight
Northeast Hoosier Conference
An eight-member IHSAA-Sanctioned Athletic Conference within the Northeastern Indiana counties of Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, Wells, and Whitley. The conference was started in 1989 as the Northeast Hoosier Conference when six sc ...
high schools in a new conference (Northeast 8) in 2015.
Membership
Current members
# Adams Central played in the ACAC and the EWVC concurrently for 1965-66, the final year for the EWVC.
# Woodlan was known as Woodburn before 1959.
Former members
# Lafayette Central became part of Roanoke High School in 1963. Roanoke itself consolidated into Huntington North in 1966, taking Lafayette Township with it. The township then split off from HNHS to become part of
Southwest Allen County Schools in 1971.
Membership timeline
DateFormat = yyyy
ImageSize = width:750 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = from:1956 till:2020
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5
Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7)
id:line value:black
id:bg value:white
PlotData=
width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s
bar:1 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text:Arcola Arcola may refer to:
Places
; Australia
* Arcola, Grafton, a heritage-listed house in New South Wales
;Canada
* Arcola, Saskatchewan, a town in the Province of Saskatchewan
* Arcola Airport, an airport in the Province of Saskatchewan
;England
* ...
(1956-1968)
bar:2 color:red from:1956 till:1960 text: Elmhurst (1956-1960)
bar:3 color:red from:1956 till:1965 text: Harlan (1956-1965)
bar:4 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text: Hoagland (1956-1968)
bar:5 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text: Huntertown (1956-1968)
bar:6 color:red from:1956 till:1963 text: Lafayette Central (1956-1963)
bar:7 color:red from:1956 till:2015 text: Leo (1956-2015)
bar:8 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text: Monroeville (1956-1968)
bar:9 color:red from:1956 till:end text: Woodburn (1956-1959)/ Woodlan (1959-present)
bar:10 color:red from:1965 till:end text: Adams Central (1965-present)
bar:11 color:red from:1966 till:1967 text:Ossian
Ossian (; Irish Gaelic/Scottish Gaelic: ''Oisean'') is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, originally as ''Fingal'' (1761) and ''Temora'' (1763), and later combined under t ...
(1966-1967)
bar:12 color:red from:1967 till:1989 text: Norwell (1967-1989)
bar:13 color:red from:1968 till:1989 text: Carroll (Fort Wayne) (1968-1989)
bar:14 color:red from:1968 till:1989 text:Churubusco
Churubusco is a neighbourhood of Mexico City. Under the current territorial division of the Mexican Federal District, it is a part of the borough ''(delegación)'' of Coyoacán. It is centred on the former Franciscan monastery ''(ex convento de C ...
(1968-1989)
bar:15 color:red from:1968 till:1980 text: Eastside (1968-1980)
bar:16 color:red from:1968 till:end text:Heritage
Heritage may refer to:
History and society
* A heritage asset is a preexisting thing of value today
** Cultural heritage is created by humans
** Natural heritage is not
* Heritage language
Biology
* Heredity, biological inheritance of physical c ...
(1968-present)
bar:17 color:red from:1971 till:1975 text:Homestead
Homestead may refer to:
*Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses
*Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres
*Homestead principle, a legal concept th ...
(1971-1975)
bar:18 color:red from:1971 till:end text: Southern Wells (1971-present)
bar:19 color:red from:1989 till:end text: Bluffton (1989-present)
bar:20 color:red from:1989 till:end text: South Adams (1989-present)
bar:21 color:red from:2005 till:2014 text: Garrett (2005-2014)
bar:22 color:red from:2014 shift:(-100,-3) till:end text: Jay County (2014-present)
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1956
TextData =
fontsize:L
textcolor:black
pos:(175,30) # tabs:(0-center)
text:"ACAC Membership History"
Division Format 1971-75
Sponsored Sports
Conference Championships
Football
* 1971-74: N = North Division champions, S = South Division champions, C = title game champions (not held in 1973).
Boys Basketball
* Champions from 1958-59 to 1990-91 not listed are unverified.
Girls Basketball
* Champions from beginning of competition (ca. 1974-75) until 2000 not listed are unverified.
Wrestling
Only tournament champions listed.
State titles
Adams Central Flying Jets (1)
*2000 Football (A)
Bluffton Tigers (0)
Garrett Railroaders (1)
*1974 Football (A)
Heritage Patriots (1)
* 1982 girls basketball
* Robert Goff - 3200 Meter Run (1992)
Leo Lions (1)
* 2014 Girls Softball (3A)
* 2008 Justin Woods, Leo 33-0 215lb State Wrestling Champion
South Adams Starfires (1)
• Davona Runkel - Girls shot put (1986)
Southern Wells Raiders (1)
*2001 Football (A)
Woodlan Warriors (0)
External links
IHSAA ConferencesIHSAA DirectoryIHSAA ClassificationIHSAA Football Classification
References
{{Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA)
Indiana high school athletic conferences
Education in Adams County, Indiana
Education in Allen County, Indiana
Education in DeKalb County, Indiana
Education in Wells County, Indiana
Articles which contain graphical timelines
1956 establishments in Indiana