London, West Jeff and Madison-Plains prior to being in the CBC and OHC, respectively, were in the MSL. London and MP for maybe 4-5 years and West Jeff maybe 8-10 years. After London and MP joined their division became like the island of misfit toys culturally between Bexley, Grandview Heights, Columbus Academy, Whitehall and Worthington Christian, and it got to the point where London, MP and WJ struggled to compete in most sports, especially football and basketball. Either the last or second to last year London was in that league they played 7-8 divisional games in basketball against teams ranked in the top-10 in the state.
The travel sucked tremendously as from those schools you had to travel into or close to downtown at rush hour times to navigate your way to your destinations. The distance was closer than CBC/OHC, but the travel times were terrible, especially for junior high and freshman sports.
For those of you smarter than I, which is very few...
London
Where were they before the CBC, and why did they leave their conferences?
Thank you for your time.
I'll go a little further on the London/WJ/Madison-Plains saga of the MSL.
It was a disaster.
At the conclusion of the 2012-13 school year, the Mid-State League Ohio saw four schools leave: Granville, Heath, Lakewood and Newark Catholic. Those four left to form the second incarnation of the Licking County League. To fill the four vacancies, the MSL slotted over West Jefferson (who competed previously in the MSL's Cardinal Division), added independent Worthington Christian (who the MSL
long wanted) and pulled London and Madison-Plains from the South Central Ohio League.
Madison-Plains and West Jefferson left the MSL at the conclusion of the 2016-17 school year for the OHC. London left the MSL at the conclusion of the 2018-2019 school year for the CBC. So... MP was in the league for only four years, WJ in the league for ten years (six in the Cardinal, four in the Ohio) and London was in the league for six years.
There were multiple reasons why this experiment failed. As nwwarrior09 notes,
1) travel sucked. It's really hard to get from any point in Madison County to Bexley and Columbus Academy. The hardest drive was undoubtedly getting to Worthington Christian.
2) There's a composition of schools within that part of the MSL (e.g. Bexley, Columbus Academy, Grandview Heights, and Worthington Christian) where football is a 'second fiddle' priority to their athletic department compared to proximity, tradition, common denominators, and prowess in basketball & the "country club" sports. No disrespect to the fine folks at West Jefferson or Madison-Plains, but those two schools... uh... don't really have anything worth more than a bucket of warm piss when it comes to those sports. Not to mention they were far "AF" away from everyone else.
3) related to #1 and #2 -- there were basically no rivalries made, so no spirited competition between the Madison County and Franklin County schools.
Except for Grandview and West Jefferson football, which already existed as a carry-over from their days in the Cardinal.
4) Somewhere along the line, football scheduling became prickly. The MSL did that really dumb thing where they forced crossovers with the Ohio (D2-D5) and Cardinal Divisions (D7 schools) for three years in that saga, and it was causing even more problems with the league.
It basically came around to mutual divorce. The Madison County schools were getting exhausted of the experiment, and the Franklin County schools realized there was more potential to be had by adding in Wellington, Columbus School for Girls, Ready and HP (both for football) and any other possible addition. That "other possible addition" ended up being
Buckeye Valley. How they landed on BV, I don't really f---ing know.