BOURBON – Triton High School announced this afternoon that it will indeed leave the Northern State Conference and will join a newly formed conference with several neighbors to the west.

This is the formal announcement sent from Triton High School Athletic Director Mason McIntyre:

“The Triton High School Athletic Department has accepted an invitation today, August 26th, to join a newly formed conference with Caston, Culver, Knox, North Judson, Pioneer, and Winamac. The Trojans are the seventh team to sign a letter of intent to join.

Triton High School has been a member of the Northern State Conference since 1980, after previously competing in the Three Rivers Conference. Triton will work with the NSC on a timetable to transfer athletic membership, but the NSC by-laws state that a two year departure period is required.

We have monitored the conference landscape for the past nine to ten months and have concluded that moving to the new conference is the best course of action for us. This will enable us to find a competitive balance among all of our sports programs. We are grateful to the members of the NSC, and the Conference which has been a wonderful home for us the past 33 years.

The newly formed conference features schools of like size and competiveness. Currently, Knox is a 3A school in all sports and would be the largest school in the conference. The other schools are all 1A or 2A schools. Enrollments will range from the mid 200’s to nearly 600 students, with the average being about 300 students. This provides a comfortable home with the Trojans falling somewhere in the middle when it comes to enrollment.

This new conference allows us to meet the needs of all of our teams. Some of our teams are already competing at a high level and for those teams, we will be able to increase our strength of schedule during the non-conference season. For our teams that are working to develop winning traditions, we have the flexibility to schedule more like size competition throughout both the conference and non-conference seasons. In the end, I believe that we can meet the needs of all of our programs in this new conference.

The Trojans will plan to keep many of the NSC schools on their schedules if possible. With the close geographic locations of these schools, and the rivalries that have been developed over the years, I believe it’s important for us to try to keep these schools on the majority of our schedules.

Triton High School looks forward to becoming a member of this new conference. We are excited to join a great group of schools that share our commitment to academics and athletics. Although many of our coaches and student athletes will miss playing in the NSC, they are excited about the new challenges ahead.

Triton currently has 15 varsity sports programs competing in the Northern State Conference. These same 15 teams will look to begin competing in the new league when it begins in the next one to two years.”