Gorches: It’s time to save the NWC

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Lighthouse Academy's #22, Muhammed Nicholson pushes off on the face mask of Gary Roosevelts #30, Friday night as West Side High School. | Jim Karczewski ~For Sun-Times Media

Updated: October 19, 2011 3:05AM

For all the criticism he’s been tossed in recent years, Gary city athletic director Earl Smith Jr. deserves a little kudos

Kudos for adding Lighthouse Academy to Friday night’s Gary O’Rama football scrimmage.

Kudos for adding Highland to the same scrimmage.

Now he needs to go one step further — make that a couple steps further — and rebuild Gary’s athletic conference that has been decimated by school closings.

Can we even call the Northwestern Conference an actual athletic conference? Remember the days when it was the best conference in Northwest Indiana?

OK, I’m actually trusting older region sports fans on that opinion since I’m not quite old enough to recall those days. I graduated high school in 1988 and didn’t pay attention to high school sports much outside of what my Clark Pioneers did. And even that was casual attentiveness — I loved when we had the rare victory over Gavit, Morton or Hammond High.

And there was that memorable 26-23 football victory over Bishop Noll in 1987 in which the Warriors botched a game-tying field goal attempt as time expired.

As usual, I digressed. What was my point? Oh yeah. Back when the Northwestern Conference had a large, competitive group — or we can rephrase that to when Gary actually had a larger population and several more high schools — it was a powerhouse in some sports.

Namely, basketball and baseball, but it wasn’t terrible in football. Wirt went 10-0 in 1966 and 9-1 in the following season.

Froebel and Tolleston closed in 1969 with the students mostly moving into West Side, which opened a year earlier. Edison closed in 1968. Emerson closed in 1981.

But even after those departures, the NWC still had five schools and was decent. Then Horace Mann closed in 2004 and Wirt closed in 2009 and now we’re down to a measly three teams.

Even the old Northland Conference that consisted of schools such as River Forest, South Central, Westville, Argos and Oregon-Davis disbanded when enough left to bring the number down to three.

Instead, Smith has to find non-area — in most cases, non-state — schools to compete in the annual Gary Holiday Basketball Tournament over Christmas break. At least the O’Rama had five teams.

Just curious, but why can’t Bowman Academy be invited too?

That question leads into a bigger question about Gary athletics that’s been asked by this columnist more than once in recent years: Why not add schools to the NWC?

With the realistic possibility of Roosevelt closing in the future — it could be very soon with the state making a decision on what needs to be done about its deteriorating academics — the NWC could disappear if something isn’t done now.

It’s a pretty simple process.

Step 1: Put any hard feelings toward Bowman aside. Over the last few years there has been some animosity between Bowman’s coaches — specifically boys basketball coach and athletic director Marvin Rea — and other Gary coaches. It’s carried over to football in which the Eagles haven’t played one of the other Gary teams since the 2007 season in which Bowman only had two varsity games — against Roosevelt and West Side, losing both games by a combined score of 112-16.

Bowman plays two Hammond schools in football this season, and East Chicago, but no Roosevelt, West Side or Wallace, which has two open dates on the schedule.

Heck, Boone Grove has Wallace and Roosevelt on its first official IHSAA football schedule, as well as Bowman. Why can’t Wallace, Roosevelt and West Side put Bowman on theirs?

Step 2: Add Lighthouse to the NWC. The new IHSAA member can’t play in the postseason until the 2015-16 school year, but it can compete during the regular season, meaning it could be approached about being in a conference.

Lighthouse will be competing in football, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls cross country and boys and girls track and field.

How much more competitive would the Gary city track meet be with five schools instead of three?

Step 3: To take the rebuilding process further, don’t stop at five. Lobby East Chicago to join since most Gary schools, including Bowman, play the Cardinals in most sports. That would make it six.

Then lobby Hammond to scrap the four-school Great Lakes Athletic Conference — because four is so much better than three — and combine. Heck, the GLAC name could stay, though the NWC has been established much longer, and it could be 10 schools between Gary and Hammond.

Can you imagine a 10-team holiday basketball tourney with all region teams? How about the best area conference track meet or a conference cross country meet at one of the Hammond parks?

Let’s get it done and prevent the NWC from dissolving.