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Should Sidney be playing in GWOC?

Open enrollment and pay-to-play policies have gutted the program.

Sidney's Kyle Dembski runs the ball at Sidney. The Yellow Jackets were 0-10 in 2010, and at 0-8, are on their way to matching that record this season.

Sidney Daily News photo by Todd Acker Sidney's Kyle Dembski runs the ball at Sidney. The Yellow Jackets were 0-10 in 2010, and at 0-8, are on their way to matching that record this season.

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By Marc F. Pendleton, Staff Writer Updated 4:15 PM Friday, October 21, 2011

It’s not that Sidney High School is encased in a long football losing streak that is of most concern. At this point, it’s enough to wonder if the proud program is still a good fit for the Greater Western Ohio Conference.

The Yellow Jackets are 0-8 this season after going 0-10 last season. And the lopsided scores are mounting. Sidney has yielded a whopping 430 points in 2011, an average of 54 per game. For comparison, no GWOC team has even come close to allowing that many points — in 10 games — over the past seven years.

That’s compounded with Sidney also scoring the least points among GWOC teams.

Last week, Sidney was stung for a season-worst 75-14 loss to North Division rival Piqua. Vandalia Butler (64), Northmont (62), Lebanon (55) and Fairborn (54) also went on scoring binges.

“I cringe when I see scores like that,” GWOC Commissioner Eric Spahr said. “I know what it does to the psyche of the kids, to the program and even the community.”

And it could get worse.

Unbeaten Trotwood-Madison, the highest-scoring team in the conference, travels to Sidney tonight. In next week’s regular-season finale, powerful Troy visits.

“I haven’t seen this, either,” first-year Sidney head coach Adam Doenges said of the lopsided outcomes. “It’s certainly not where you want to be or the school wants to be or the community wants to be.”

How did it happen?

A perfect storm of football meltdown has leveled the northern-most GWOC school:

• Led by Trotwood, Troy and Butler, the GWOC North is as strong as it’s ever been.

• Like many school districts, Sidney historically has had a hard time passing school levies. That came to a head when two years ago Sidney’s pay-to-play soared to $450 for each sport.

• That high-end pay-to-play cost only lasted that fall, but the devastating effects were bundled in a time release. It resulted in talented underclassmen and middle school athletes opting for neighboring districts that offered open enrollment. The main benefactors of Sidney-bred talent have been Lehman Catholic and Anna to the north.

• Football numbers are down. There are 55 players in grades 10-12, and injuries have taken a toll. A freshman team was scrapped, mainly undone by academic ineligibility, Doenges said.

• Finally, there’s a new coach in Doenges, a longtime assistant who didn’t take over until mid-summer. And he installed a new offense, opting for a more traditional spread instead of the Wing-T his players had grown up running.

“People saw this coming,” said Ken Barhorst, sports editor of the Sidney Daily News for 35 years.

“I don’t know that they saw that it was going to come this badly.”

There’s no comparison

Former Sidney football coach Dan Cairns reluctantly left the district when it became apparent that his teaching position would be eliminated last spring. He has landed at Parkway as a physical education teacher and head football coach.

Still a Sidney resident, he aches for the Yellow Jackets. He spent six years coaching at Sidney. In that damaging pay-to-play season of 2009, Sidney was 5-5 and Cairns was the GWOC North coach of the year.

By all accounts, he was the right coach for a difficult job. He also was the head track and field coach at Sidney and witnessed the growing disparity between Yellow Jackets sports and other league programs.

“I don’t think that they’re in a league that benefits them in any way,” insists Cairns. “You play Northmont, Beavercreek, Wayne (in crossover games), it doesn’t affect you for one week, it affects you for multiple weeks because of how physical the game is.”

Spahr said that GWOC football teams can opt out of crossover games if both teams agree to do so.

With 413 boys at Sidney (in grades 9-11, per Ohio High School Athletic Association enrollment figures), Trotwood is the only GWOC North team with fewer (386) males. Cairns said that during his time with the program, no Sidney player was offered an NCAA Division I scholarship. Sidney graduates Devon Langhorst and Justin Griffis are standout players at the University of Dayton, a non-scholarship program.

By comparison, Trotwood, Troy and even Butler are loaded this season with players headed to BCS schools.

“Sidney hasn’t had those kinds of athletes come through the program,” Cairns said. “To be honest, I don’t even think those kids are walking the hallways. It’s just the other guy’s Jimmys are better than your Joes.”

A different situation

It wasn’t always that way at Sidney. The Yellow Jackets play on “30 & 0 Field” at Memorial Stadium. It’s an impressive complex that seats 7,000. The field name is a source of pride around town. It’s a reference to three consecutive teams (1968-70) that each went 10-0 in an era before the playoffs.

Those great Sidney teams excelled in the final years of the now-defunct Miami Valley League. Piqua, Greenville, Urbana, Bellefontaine and Lima Shawnee also were members.

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