Whiteford, Erie Mason set for TCC's final football season

As Whiteford High School's football team has ascended to the status of being one of Michigan's top small-school, 11-player programs in the past three seasons, its base of operation — the Tri-County Conference — has simultaneously been disintegrating.

The decline has become so severe that the 2024 season will be the last as a football league for the TCC, which began play in 1973. At least for the foreseeable future.

In the upcoming season, Whiteford's Bobcats — the 2023 Michigan Division 8 state runners-up at 13-1 after their perfect 14-0 run to a D-8 state title in 2022 — are one of three remaining TCC football teams along with Erie Mason and Summerfield.

“I don't think I knew this was going to happen at first,” third-year Whiteford head coach Todd Thieken said of the TCC's rapid erosion. “Whitmore Lake left [in 2019], and then Britton-Deerfield and Morenci went to 8-man football.

“It was kind of like a perfect storm. These things happened, and then the worry was, 'Who else is going to go?' Then Adrian Madison left because they had an opportunity to go to the LCAA.

“Three years ago, I don't think any of us knew this would happen, and then everything just kind of happened — like an avalanche.”

The TCC fade has come with Whiteford enjoying its best football era in school history — a 120-25 overall record since 2012 (30-10 in playoff games), including D-8 state titles in 2017 and 2022, runner-up finishes in 2016 and 2023, and semifinal runs in 2015 and 2021.

As recently as 2020, the TCC had eight football teams — the current three plus Adrian Madison, Britton-Deerfield, Morenci, Pittsford, and Sand Creek.

In 2021, Britton-Deerfield switched to 8-man football and moved to the Tri-River 8 conference. In 2022, Morenci did the same, while Pittsford exited and moved to a different 8-man league, leaving the TCC with five teams.

Last season, Adrian Madison, which retained 11-man football, moved closer to home to join the Lenawee County Athletic Association. Madison replaced Brooklyn Columbia Central, which left the LCAA after the 2022-23 school year.

Finally, after the 2023 season, Sand Creek, a TCC member since 1975, exited to join the Big 8 Conference as a football-only member of that league.

“We had some smaller schools in our league who chose to go to 8-man football, and I certainly can understand why they did it,” Thieken said. “The rise of 8-man football kind of goes with what's happening everywhere with football. You don't see as many kids playing football as you had 10 years ago.

“Society has changed a little bit, and you just don't have as many kids playing. It's always been our thought process here that we know we're a small school too, but we're going to work tirelessly to recruit as many kids in our school as we can to come out for football.”

The TCC's dilemma is currently more of a football-only problem.

Britton-Deerfield, Morenci, and Sand Creek each retained their TCC membership for all other sports. A seventh member, Adrian's Lenawee Christian High School, joined the TCC for all sports except football in the fall of 2023.

But with the writing on the wall for TCC football, the 11-man football programs at Erie Mason and Whiteford came up with at least a temporary solution for the 2025 and 2026 seasons.

Those two teams will become kind of pseudo members of the LCAA, each playing a home-and-home nonleague schedule against nearly all of the LCAA football teams in 2025 and 2026.

The LCAA arrangement comes after the surviving TCC football teams had discussions about a possible merger south of the border with the Toledo Area Athletic Conference. Those talks ultimately stalled.

“The past year we've been trying to figure out something that was going to be a good option for us,” fourth-year Erie Mason coach Steve Bowers said. “First, it was looking at the TAAC as a potential option. Nothing seemed to work out with them.

“Then, Whiteford kind of took it upon themselves to reach out to the LCAA to try to throw some ideas out there. That went back and forth, and what was settled on was playing a schedule of LCAA teams.”

With a reconfigured nine-game regular-season schedule, Whiteford will play all eight LCAA schools — Adrian Madison, Blissfield, Clinton, Dundee, Ida, Hillsdale, Hudson, and Onsted — and retain its game with Erie Mason's Eagles.

The Eagles will play seven of the eight LCAA teams, excluding Hillsdale, and will need to find a ninth opponent for both 2025 and 2026.

“I don't know if this is the best competitive option for us,” Bowers said, “but it keeps us playing 11-man football and not having to look and see if we need to consider something else.

“It allows us to get back to playing some of those teams. We had a long rivalry with Ida, and not being able to play them the last several years has been weird. When we switched to the TCC, we didn't really have that one team on our schedule that was our rival. This brings us back to playing some familiar faces. Overall, from top to bottom, it's much more competitive football.”

The two major catches to this otherwise convenient arrangement are that the Bobcats and Eagles will not be able to compete for an LCAA championship, and their players will not be eligible for All-LCAA postseason honors.

“It's a great situation for us,” Thieken said, acknowledging the down side of no league title chase or individual player honors. “We already played two schools from that league anyway. We've had a longstanding tradition with Blissfield, and the last several years we've played Ida. Those were great contests. And, until a few years ago, we had played Adrian Madison every year in the TCC.

“With what we're dealing with this year, and having such a hard time finding five schools that wanted to play us, that gave us some schedule consistency for the next two years. We're not going to be traveling really far for anything, and we're going to get an equal amount of home games at our place. From a competition standpoint, it fits right in with where we should be playing.”

Summerfield, which will also retain its TCC membership for other sports, will have to seek football opponents in an independent capacity beyond the upcoming season.

The 2025-26 arrangement in the LCAA for Erie Mason and Whiteford will enable them to avoid what they, and Summerfield, are forced to face in the 2024 season.

The 2024 schedule is a mishmash of two league and seven nonleague games for all three teams, and one that will involve excessive travel and minimal home games, especially for Whiteford.

The Bobcats will play just three home games — their nonleague opener versus Blissfield on Aug. 29, plus their TCC games against Summerfield (Sept. 27) and Erie Mason (Oct. 4) — and will roll up some serious bus mileage in their six road contests.

Averaging 100 miles on these six Friday trips, Whiteford will travel 166 miles to play at Buchanan, 75 to play Edon (Ohio), 89 to Clarkston Everest, 122 to White Pigeon, and 136 to Lucas (Ohio). The only nearby road trip comes on Sept. 6 at Ida, a 16-mile drive.

Erie Mason got somewhat of a break in comparison.

Even though the Eagles have just four home games, their longest road trip comes in Week 8, when they travel 47 miles to face Lutheran Westland in Suburban Detroit.

Mason does play two teams from Flint, Mich. — New Standard Academy in Week 1, and International Academy in Week 9 — but both will be at home in Erie.

As for Summerfield, the Bulldogs have only been able to fill eight of their nine weeks on the 2024 schedule, but five games are at home, and their longest road trips are to Ohio — 65 miles to Hilltop in Week 4 and 56 miles to North Central in Week 6. In between, they play at nearby Whiteford.

Although Mason and Whiteford may covet an eventual permanent home in the LCAA, at least for football, there are no guarantees for such a merger after 2026.

Mason had been an LCAA member from 1988-2019, joining the TCC in 2020 after some monster struggles in the LCAA after back-to-back banner seasons in 2002 (11-1 overall ) and 2003 (12-1).

After 2004, when the Eagles were 5-4 (4-2 LCAA), Mason posted 15 straight losing seasons (2005-19), going 21-114 overall and 9-84 in LCAA play, and ending on a 29-game league losing streak before joining the TCC in 2020.

“It's been pretty disappointing,” Bowers said of the TCC demise. “When we left the LCAA a few years ago, it looked like a good move for us. At the time, we were the second smallest school in the LCAA.

“We struggled for some years in football, and a handful of other sports there, and we seemed to fit in well in the TCC and had some success. After the first couple years, somebody has left every year to where now it's just us, Whiteford and Summerfield.”

In four TCC football seasons, Mason has gone 21-16 overall and 13-6 in conference play, including a TCC title in their first season (7-1, 6-0 in 2020).

Returning to play mostly LCAA teams may slow that momentum for Mason, but with basically no other options, it is a rational move.

As for the LCAA contingent, the 2025 and 2026 seasons will likely determine whether this experiment bears fruit.

“It doesn't change a whole lot for us because we had already played Whiteford as a nonconference game,” Ida coach Jeff Potter said. “It's kind of an odd set-up the way it's being done. I think it's a stop-gap thing. Part of it depends on the enrollments of the schools, and the way the playoff system is set up for Michigan high school football. So, we'll have to see.

“I know for Whiteford and Erie Mason, there's not really a better option for them without a lot of travel. I don't know what this is going to look like in two years. We'll have to reevaluate after year one and see where it takes us.”

Potter said he believes the reaction within in the LCAA membership is mixed at the outset of the new arrangement.

“I think it's split 50-50,” he said. “Some people might be willing to switch their opinion depending on how it goes, whether they're for it or against it. Part of it is, for some schools, it's difficult to find nonconference games, and now you'll have your nonconference schedule set. In that regard, I think it's helpful. But, it's a little bit of a catch-22 for some of the schools in the league.

“We have a good relationship with Erie Mason. It was definitely a rivalry [in previous years]. They're right next door to us. We played Whiteford the last three years, and they have been extremely good. We might've picked the wrong three years to play them.”