SOC AD's Meeting: Dates set for fall championships

PORTSMOUTH — The Southern Ohio Conference held its athletic directors' meeting this past Thursday ahead of the start of the 2025-26 sports season.

Much of the meeting focused on setting the dates and locations for league championship matches and finalizing new selection processes for all-league teams and all-star games.

For golf, the dates were set for the SOC championship match. The tournament will be held on September 16-17 at the Elks Country Club.

The cross country finals will be held on September 11 at Waverly. It was also confirmed that next year's meet would be held at Eastern.

Girls tennis would be held at Portsmouth West High School for the four schools that are fielding teams this fall. The dates were set for September 23-24.

Some other pieces of business included reaffirming the new selection process for league all-league nominations to hopefully improve the voting process. This also included a change in date for when the baseball and softball selections would be made. In past years', the coaches met at the meetings for all-district selections.

Portsmouth was also a topic of discussion. While they're slated to join the conference at the beginning of the 2027-28 school year, the idea was pitched to allow early admission for swimming and boys/girls tennis to help make sure those sports have enough teams to have a league championship. The motion received plenty of positive feedback and would be looked into with the superintendents.

Right as the meeting drawing to an end, there was a short discussion about the rumors swirling around Minford exploring a potential move to the Ohio Valley Conference. It was confirmed that Minford representatives had held conversations with OVC members. And while there have been talks with the league, no decision had been made either way.