Down River

By John Lipez

Everybody onto the Bus:
Central Mountain High School and its location became something of a talking point at a recent Danville Area School Board meeting. A topic at that session concerned, according to newspaper accounts, “student wellness and cost impacts of participating in the Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference.” Officials said membership in the PHAC can lead to long road trips and late nights.

The story caught the Down River eye, given the distance local high school sports teams have to travel, as noted by some Record Bees O’Brien stories about the Bucktail football team and its fall pilgrimages in a far-flung northcentral Pennsylvania conference out of District 9. That PIAA district is north and west of Bucktail and Central Mountain, both of which are in District 6, even though the Bucks compete in District 4 to the east in most sports and Central Mountain competes mainly against District 4 schools in the Heartland, while maintaining District 6 membership. Confused? I thought so.

Anyway, the Danville assistant superintendent said he would be having a conversation with others relative to “geographic alignment. “Districts have to jump over geographic locations in order to play someone who could be an hour or more away. This leads to a lot of early dismissals and late returns,” said Jason Moser. He said student wellness is impacted by the loss of class time for lengthy travels, along with late returns on school nights.
Danville board president Wayne Burkhart was reported most vocal about the situation, stating “I don’t understand how Danville and Central Mountain are competing and Danville and Bloomsburg are not. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Danville and Bloomsburg are less than 10 miles apart, while Danville to Central Mountain is 58 miles, according to the story, Central Mountain the farthest west school in the conference. The two schools compete against each other in girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, softball, girls tennis and track and field, per the PHAC website.

Given that and given the mileage Record owner Michael Frank had to pay Bees to travel to wherever near the New York state boarder, the Down River research staff ran the numbers on miles traveled for the Bucks and the Wildcats in football season. There was nothing closer than the 9.3 miles between Bloomsburg and Danville; no surprise there.

The longest trip was one Central Mountain didn’t make this season, but did so in 2022, part of a 2-year (thankfully) contract with Garden Spot in New Holland, Lancaster County. That one checked out at 159 miles, a trip of 2 hours, 38 minutes. Runner-up goes to the Bucks for a trip to Sheffield, south of Warren, 99 miles and 2 hours, 11 minutes.

Other notable football trips (on Fridays so it’s early dismissal but not a late weeknight for the participants) included the Bucks to Duke Center (great name) for a match-up with Otto-Eldred/Oswayo Valley (confusing name), 86.9 miles and 1 hour, 51 minutes; longest trek for the Wildcat team was to Shamokin, 69.9 miles, 1 hour, 15 minutes. Shortest is this Friday’s jaunt down 220 to Jersey Shore, 15 miles, 17 minutes.

Do you have a solution to the scheduling problem for the two high schools? There is no simple answer. Bucktail is limited by geography and school size; not a lot of options as the closest opponent is Cameron County, 47.6 miles and 1 hour from Farwell to Emporium. The Bucks had to go northwest to find comparably sized schools. Central Mountain, geographically closer to its opponents, still has to travel quite a bit for its competition.

Scheduling has been a problem for both schools for some time. The Lock Haven – Bald Eagle-Nittany consolidation nearly a quarter century ago pushed the resulting Wildcats up in classification and took it out of the old Mountain League which included relatively nearby schools such as Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Area. And now the Mountain League is gone, part of an expanded Laurel Highlands Conference which is limited to in-conference games only for league members.

When Central Mountain was first set up, the Wildcats were part of a far-flung northwestern conference which included a couple trips a year to Erie. Fortunately, that didn’t last long.

For now, the Heartland seems the best bet for Central Mountain (it should be noted that the larger and relatively closer Williamsport High School is in the process of getting in to virtually all sports in the same conference). For Bucktail, if you have a better answer, yell. Time on a bus in the price to pay for scholastic sports teams in Clinton County.