On July 1, 2023, the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference (OVAC) will begin a year-long 80th anniversary celebration of its existence from 1943-2023. While honoring and recognizing its past, the OVAC will enter that anniversary celebration with a clear-cut goal: ensure sustainability to last another 80 years.
“My thoughts are 80 years is a long time,” OVAC Executive Director Dirk DeCoy said. “The conference started in the middle of World War II, and for something to last 80 years is amazing. Look at the things that have come and gone. Stores have come and gone, technologies that have come along. We hope to have that for another 80 years.”
Heading into its 80th anniversary celebration, the OVAC has shown plenty of growth since April 3, 1943. It began with nine visionaries from eight Ohio Valley schools. Now it has 60 people employed as commissioners, assistant commissioners, directors and assistant directors, and board members. Then it had 20 charter schools, now it has 51-member schools.
“With 51-member schools, the OVAC is still the largest two-state high school athletic conference in the country,” DeCoy said.
DeCoy became executive director of the OVAC in July 1, 2019 when the conference had 48 schools. During his four years in charge the OVAC has added New Philadelphia (which has since left the conference), Dover, Marietta and Wood County Christian.
The conference has added two new sports in boys and girls bowling and will soon consider the addition of two more sports. School and sports expansion isn’t a primary driving force, however.
“What I want to continue to do is outreach, to tell the community all the good this conference does. I feel the conference was held too close to the vest over the years,” DeCoy said. “We need to be proud of this conference.”
DeCoy is quick to highlight some key changes made within the OVAC. By implementing new processes and procedures, the sustainability improves for the league’s future by in part interviewing and hiring top-notch people. Vacant jobs are posted on-line, and an Interview Committee was developed to ensure the OVAC interviews the most qualified candidates for the job.
“We’ve hired over 20 people (in the last 24 months) and shored up the foundation of this conference. That will improve the sustainability of this conference for the next 80 years,” DeCoy said.
According to the OVAC website, the demand arose in 1943 for a conference which would help stimulate and promote a more lucrative program of competitive high school athletics in the upper Ohio Valley. The basic objective of the OVAC is to continue the promotion of all high school athletics and to serve in the overall development of proper school relationship, scholarship, and sportsmanship within the conference.
That objective remains, but others have grown around it. The OVAC is focusing efforts to highlight, improve and increase its outreach into the school and student-athlete population. Through OVAC donor families and business partners the conference now awards more than $50,000 annually in scholarships. Additionally, the league offers the Varsity Board Program, which selects identified leaders in their class. More than 120 students meet four times per year to listen to presentations from OVAC alumni now in leadership positions.
But the outreach doesn’t stop there. DeCoy wants to see the OVAC presence grown in communities. Whenever possible, championships are moved to other parts of the conference to allow those selected communities to be excited that the OVAC is coming to town. He mentioned some championships have been expanded to two days from the original one; this allows communities another day of traffic, and it allows more participants into the event.
The conference’s Sports World Speakers Program will have three presentations during the 2023-24 school year. Ex-professional athletes will travel to high schools to speak about their paths to the professional sports level, and the pros provide an avenue for students to reach out to them about troubling issues they may be facing in school or at home.
The conference is implementing more “fun stuff” for the student-athletes by issuing OVAC logo stickers for football, baseball and softball helmets. Players and their families can take pictures in front of the OVAC Championship backdrop banners and post them on social media. A new logo is being considered, and the wooden trophies presented to conference winners will continue to grow as a focal point.
So, how big is the OVAC? Really big. The OVAC is home to 652 head coaches (not including assistants) and almost 19,000 students in grades 10-12 in 20 counties in West Virginia and Ohio. It takes 7 ½ hours to drive the perimeter of the conference from East Liverpool to Morgantown to Parkersburg to Dover and back to East Liverpool!
For a conference to exist and flourish for 80 years, then set the goal to attain another 80 years, size isn’t the only thing to make that possible. One common theme exists in the past, present and future for the OVAC.
“We’re in the business of making memories,” Decoy said.
Article compliments of Howard Karnell
Discussion about this post