Ohio River Valley Conference


The Ohio River Valley Conference is an Indiana High School Athletic Association-sanctioned conference located in Jefferson, Ohio, Ripley, and Switzerland counties. Formed in 1952, the conference has been fairly stable throughout its history, as five of the current seven members are original members.

History

The ORVC traces its history to two conferences, the Southeastern Indiana and Laughery Valley. When the league began, two of its members came from the SEIC, a third had been in the SEIC before helping found the LVC, and a fourth was a SEIC member until being removed from the conference in 1942, remaining independent since that point. The first shakeup in conference membership came in the conference's second year, as North closed, and two more LVC schools joined with one SEIC school. Hanover and Osgood consolidated with other local schools to become Southwestern and Jac-Cen-Del in 1960, with both staying in the league. Milan, a school that had dominated 1950s basketball and had football, moved to the Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference in 1962. They were replaced by two schools: Shawe Memorial in 1962, and Sunman in 1964. Versailles became South Ripley in 1966, with Vevay changing to Switzerland County in 1969.
The 1970s were a different story, as the three member schools would not survive to the end of the decade. Sunman was consolidated with North Dearborn in 1973, forming East Central. Dillsboro and Moores Hill would follow suit in 1978, combining with Aurora to form South Dearborn. Both of those schools had pre-consolidation ties to the Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference, and would retain their places in that conference. Left as a six-school conference, the ORVC welcomed founding member Milan back in 1985, as the former basketball power was struggling to keep up with larger rivals in the post-consolidation era. The conference has been stable since, a two-year hiatus by Southwestern in the mid-1990s notwithstanding. That stability looks to continue into the future. Lawrenceburg was denied entry in the 1990s, and there is only one other school in the area who is of a similar size.

Membership

  1. Milan played in the Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference from 1962 to 1985.
  2. Southwestern played as an Independent from 1994 to 1996 after being removed from the conference for rules violations.

Membership timeline


DateFormat = yyyy
ImageSize = width:750 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = from:1952 till:2020
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5
Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb
id:line value:black
id:bg value:white
PlotData=
width:15 textcolor:black shift: anchor:from fontsize:s
bar:1 color:red from:1952 till:1960 text:Hanover
bar:2 color:red from:1952 till:1962 text:Milan
bar:2 color:red from:1985 till:end text:
bar:3 color:red from:1952 till:1953 text:North (Madison)
bar:4 color:red from:1952 till:1960 text:Osgood
bar:5 color:red from:1952 till:end text:Rising Sun
bar:6 color:red from:1952 till:1966 text:[South Ripley County, Indiana|Ripley Junior/Senior High School|Versailles]
bar:7 color:red from:1953 till:1978 text:Dillsboro
bar:8 color:red from:1953 till:1978 text:Moores Hill
bar:9 color:red from:1953 till:1968 text:Vevay
bar:10 color:red from:1960 till:end text:Jac-Cen-Del
bar:11 color:red from:1960 till:1994 text:Southwestern (Hanover)
bar:11 color:red from:1996 till:end text:
bar:12 color:red from:1962 till:end text:Shawe Memorial
bar:13 color:red from:1964 till:1973 text:Sunman
bar:14 color:red from:1966 till:end text:South Ripley
bar:15 color:red from:1968 till:end text:Switzerland County
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1952
TextData =
fontsize:L
textcolor:black
pos: # tabs:
text:"Ohio River Valley Conference Membership History"

Conference championships

Boys basketball

  • Champions for 1952–53, 1957–58, 1960–61, 1963–64, 1974–75, 1979–80, 1982–83, and 1989–90 are unverified.

Girls basketball

  • Girls champions from 1976-77 until 1998-99 are unverified.

Girls Soccer

  • Girls conference champions not officially recognized until 2015

State championships

Jac-Cen-Del (2)

Milan (1)

Southwestern (Hanover) (1)

  • 2002 Girls Basketball

Rising Sun (0)

  • 2000 Girls Basketball Runner-Up

Resources