I believe they were it from 1998-2005.
I have a friend who played in 2004 actually. Your guess wasn’t far off from what he said! He responded right away when I just asked and thought:
- Tree of Life
- Evangel (Gahanna Christian)
- Delaware Christian
- GCC
- Maranatha
- Liberty
- Northside???
He followed Tree since when he played. Said he thought Maranatha’s final year was 04, Liberty dropped in 05. Fairfield came around 07, Northside dropped around 09 and came back in 15.
Gave me a little history lesson. I’m copying his text here and cleaning up a little on the punctuation:
The first few years were a mess. Northside popped in and out. Maranatha shut down, Liberty dropped a year after Maranatha, Tree and GCC joined around 2002. I believe Tree’s current girls coach led Delaware Christian boys to a title the first year (1998) and put up like 100 points per game before leaving for Marion Catholic to coach McCantz. Madison Christian was mid 00s. Grace Haven was there for a couple years as essentially a homeschool team, then dropped, changed their name to Granville Christian, tried to rejoin but couldn’t because the conference then required ohsaa membership, then rejoined in like 2011. Gilead Christian was a probationary member at the same time as Granville but never joined for some reason. There were some terrible teams that got dominated by Tree for a decade straight. Tree went something like 110-1 over a decade. Fairfield Christian joined solely as a stepping stone to a bigger conference and left the first chance they got. Shekinah joined in 2015-16, Gahanna shut down a couple years after that.
Lots I didnt know haha. Can’t seem to find any other standings or anything about the conference from the early days. Seems like it was very disorganized and didn’t track things well.
I am 99% sure the school that is today known as Patriot Prep is the former Liberty Christian in Whitehall. Not that it is directly a successor or otherwise affiliated, but the building is the former LCA. The current Liberty Christian is the one in Pataskala, of course.
Your friend is correct re: Ben Patrick. Ed McCants was really good and played at Northwestern; his younger brother played at an HBCU in the MEAC (I want to say it was South Carolina State.) Those Marion Catholic teams... put up points, gave up a lot of points as well. The legend has it that Dad McCants put them into MC because he was upset Harding didn't hire him as coach. LMAOOO -- that's the most ironically petty thing I've ever heard, if indeed true.
Northside being in the MOCAL back then? A-ha! I believe it. Wasn't too sure on the dates and the entire school history, but makes sense.
Gilead Christian, in that general time, had an actually decent girls' athletic program. When I say decent, I mean making the district tournament in volleyball and girls' hoops (I
believe.) Madison Christian, as well, had some good girls' programs (namely volleyball... Mike Rahe, the AD at Bishop Hartley, his oldest daughter attended MCS all the way through and was stellar. Had good teammates, too.)
The one where I politely disagree with your friend on is FCA -- I think the idea of them joining in the MOCAL in the pursuit of something larger is somewhat of a revisionist account. Not that there is any ill intent or motive by your friend! FCA did have the general idea of growing larger than they were in the mid-00's, with the belief that athletics were the pathway, but there wasn't at all any inkling then that they would eventually join the Mid-State League. The bedrock sport of that school was the football program, which was the brainchild of Dave Daubenmire (yes, the same Dave Daubenmire you have probably heard of at some point or another) and some well-heeled dads that wanted their kids to play football. Had big participation rates top-to-bottom in the mid-late 00's. But, the school literally didn't build a single athletic facility beyond the conversion of their already-existing multi-purpose gymnasium into a basketball court. No baseball or softball fields, no football fields, not even a soccer field in case they ever wanted the sport. (And that has come around to haunt them, big time, these last five years and today.) Their basketball ascent, beginning with boys c. 2011, I presume was partly fueled by an overarching idea and philosophy that it was becoming imperative to join a league where promoting wins and success wasn't seen as directly incompatible with the general concept of athletics.
Tree was dominant in that run. They made the 'Elite 8' (Regional Finals) in 2009-10. That 2010-11 season, Tree's first game was supposed to be us but we cancelled. We ended up upsetting #1 seed Tree that year at Westerville North (Tree really was not, hands down, the best team in the district that year. They were probably the 2nd best, though. Harvest Prep was the best team, bar-none, but then-coach Mike Thornton didn't submit his team record -- so everyone basically pretended "well we don't know how good Harvest Prep is" even though they won the Cardinal 14-0 and didn't vote them.)
Trivia: can you name the north central Ohio private school that did
not participate in the MOCAL, but did compete in OHSAA and in the Central District, during the 00's and early '10s?
