KLAA to Lakes Valley Conference
October 23, 2017
This past year, Huron Valley made a decision that has led to significant changes in the athletics programs at Milford High School and Lakeland High School.
After deciding it was no longer in the school’s best interests to stay in the KLAA, Milford Athletic Director, Jim Marszalek, with other KLAA athletic directors, helped to join the new division: Lakes Valley Conference. But in the near future, LVC is hoping to expand. Milford no longer plays some of its rivals such as Brighton and Hartland, but will still play the Walled Lake Schools, Waterford Schools, South Lyon Schools and Lakeland.
Overall, many people think the change was a good choice, considering Milford is now playing schools with similar student populations and it reduces the amount of travel. KLAA division, Milford would drive up to thirty miles away for athletic events against Pinckney or Grand Blanc. Now, in the Lakes Valley Conference, the longest drive is under 20 miles.
“I think this year will be a lot better because we can compete against schools our size, so we can be more competitive,” explained sophomore Mallory Roethler, a varsity cheerleader. Size was a big issue in the KLAA division, as there were bigger schools like Grand Blanc (nearly 2,800 students), going up against smaller schools like Milford that had half the student population. Grand Blanc, Brighton, Howell and Hartland all had more than 2,000 students, making it hard to com- pete against them.
Most of the coaches had a posi tive attitude towards the change, knowing that their teams would do better with the new conference. “I can see my team doing better this year since we can compete with teams around the same size and the same abilities as us,” shared Kris Goodrich, the varsity swim coach. As a whole, coaches believe this was a good choice and can already see a change in their athletes’ attitudes and a change in the spectators’ attitudes.
These schools are hoping to keep this conference together and expand it. This process took around two years to complete, from finding schools to organizing schedules. Pinckney was originally completing the conference with ten teams, but then decided to drop out due to transportation concerns.
Although some rivals aren’t in our division anymore, many of the sports allow us to still compete against them in larger competitions, therefore the Athletic Directors didn’t find an issue with not being in the same division as them. As a whole, our conference is more durable and harder in a way that athletes have more motivation to win since there is better chances now. For that reason, this change led to a positive effect on all of us.