By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

The finish line is approaching for something new in Portage County.

Pending expected board approvals, a new league that will include eight schools will be formally announced on Friday.

The league, which has yet to have a name attached to it, will be scheduled to begin athletic play in 2027-28 and will include: Crestwood, Garfield, Mogadore, Ravenna, Rootstown, Southeast, Akron Springfield and Waterloo.

All of the schools are former members of the Portage Trail Conference and seven of the schools (save for Springfield) were all members of the Portage County League.

Over the course of the last 10 years, all of the school had landed in new leagues either before or following the collapse of the PTC.

Garfield, Southeast and Waterloo will be leaving the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference.

Crestwood and Rootstown will exit the Chagrin Valley Conference.

Ravenna and Springfield will depart from the Metro Athletic Conference.

Mogadore, which most recently were members of the PTC, is playing the 2025-26 athletic season as an independent.

Waterloo’s Board of Education voted unanimously, 5-0, to join the new Portage-based league on Jan. 8.

Mogadore, Rootstown and Southeast all voted unanimously in favor of the new league on Monday.

Crestwood, Garfield and Springfield have Board of Education meetings scheduled for Tuesday (Jan. 13) and Ravenna’s next board meeting is scheduled for Jan. 26, according to the district’s website.

All eight of the districts had reached a verbal agreement for the new league, making the Board of Education meetings the last formality and respectfully asking the media to embargo the official announcement of the league until Friday (Jan. 16).

The Portage Trail Conference officially disbanded after the 2024-25 school year, but it had been depleted with the once two-division league becoming one with the Metro Division left to form the Metro Athletic Conference in 2019. At that time, Cloverleaf, Coventry, Field, Norton, Ravenna, Springfield, Streetsboro and Woodridge, all members of the Metro Division, announced an exit from the PTC to form their own league.

It left the PTC County Division as the standalone members of the league, but a growingly unbalanced league schedule ultimately became its demise, with Crestwood leaving for the CVC in 2020, Valley Christian leaving for the Eastern Ohio Athletic Conference in 2020 and Garfield joining the MVAC in 2021.

Portage Sports will have a follow-up story on the new league, including comments from the county’s Superintendents and Athletic Directors, on Friday.