Today's motorcycle ride was all about the MAC. What is the MAC, you ask? All Ohio high school sports fans recognize those three letters as standing for the Midwest Athletic Conference, the most feared small-school conference in Ohio! Representatives from this conference routinely dominate their divisions in the various high school sports played in Ohio and frequently bring home the state championship in the sport in question. Being a fan of small-school high school sports, I've been an admirer of the way the MAC schools go about their business for a number of years now (even though they are a rival league to the Northwest Conference (NWC) school that I follow).
After the St. Henry Redskins won this year's Division III state basketball championship (by beating fellow conference member Versailles!), the Columbus Dispatch ran an article discussing the importance of sports to small towns and, in particular, detailing the phenomenal success of the MAC schools. In the article, the writer mentioned that the St. Henry team would follow tradition by dancing on the bar at Fish-Mo's, a St. Henry watering hole and sports mecca. My brother (also a fan of the MAC despite being a diehard devotee the NWC) and I immediately agreed that someday we'd visit Fish-Mo's to experience the aura for ourselves.
The opportunity to visit Fish-Mo's presented itself on the last Saturday in April. My brother and I both had some free time in our busy schedules and agreed to meet at the bar at noon. Given the clearing weather (after an entire week of rain), I decided to make my trip up (and back) on my Nighthawk and to make up my route so as to hit a couple of the other MAC towns--might as well get a flavor for the whole league while in the area! After checking the air pressure in my tires, I hit the road at 10:30 looking forward to a nice ride.
Once the superslab portion of the ride (the first 30 miles or so) was over, I took off across the backroads of Ohio, working my way to the north and west. The first MAC town I came to was Versailles. Home to the Versailles Tigers (Division IV state champions in football in 2003), it seemed to be a nice, peaceful place on this fine Saturday morning. The roads to and from Versailles took me through Ohio farmland. Many of the farmers were busy preparing their fields for spring planting, and several times I needed to zoom around a tractor making its way from one field to the next via the pavement that ties them all together. While the roads I traveled weren't the best "motorcycle roads" that I've ever ridden, they certainly were great for seeing part of what makes this country, and the Midwest in particular, a great place--hard-working, salt-of-the-earth individuals providing for themselves and their families, while supplying the rest of the world with products necessary for life.
The ride from Versailles to St. Henry was "soothing"--I usually find myself at peace when riding through farm country. The homes and property in this area are generally very well kept, a sign of pride and hard work. Also, this area is pretty flat, with one's vision only interrupted by buildings and forests. I could see the steeple of the church in St. Henry, as well as the steeples for churches in other nearby towns, from several miles away.
Rolling into St. Henry, I saw that I had timed things pretty well as it was a minute or two shy of my noon meeting time. I wasn't too concerned about being able to find Fish-Mo's, despite having never been to St. Henry, since the town's population is less than 2,500. I spied the bar right on the town's Main Street, and then spotted my brother sitting on the tailgate of his pickup waiting for me. After removing my gear and greeting my brother, we walked through the front door of the bar and into the world of sports memorabilia.
The sign at the town's corporation limit that proclaimed the numerous state championships won by the high school sports teams (16 and counting in four different sports) was echoed inside Fish-Mo's. The walls were covered with photos of victorious teams and jerseys of those who had gone on to star at the college or professional level. Wally Post, Jim Lachey, Bobby Hoying, and Jeff Hartings have all graduated from St. Henry high school and gone on to play professional ball (baseball for Post, football for the others). Several TVs were playing above the bar, two of them showing the 2004 NFL draft in progress, another tuned to the Ohio State Buckeye Spring Game (where St. Henry product Todd Boeckman is competing for the Buckeye quarterback job). For a high school sports fan, it was truly a great environment!
Following a good lunch and some pleasant conversation, I saddled up to head back home via a couple of more MAC towns. After saying goodbye to my brother, I headed east on SR-119 for the eight mile (or so) ride to Maria Stein, home of the Maria Stein Marion Local (MSML) high school. Playing in Division VI in football, the division for the smallest schools in the state, MSML is a perennial power. It seems that playing the mostly bigger schools in the MAC toughens them up for a run at a championship each year. In 2003, for example, they suffered 3 losses in league play and entered the playoffs as the team with the worst seed in their region. However, they marched through the playoffs all the way to the championship game, only to lose to the Columbus Grove Bulldogs. In both football and basketball, MSML comes to play. As I rode into "town," I was surprised by the lack of an actual town. There really wasn't much to Maria Stein despite the fact that it had about the same population size as St. Henry. It amazed me that this was the home to such a small-school powerhouse!
On the other hand, Minster, the last MAC town on my list for the day's ride, surprised me with how big it seemed. Population-wise, it isn't much bigger than either Maria Stein or St. Henry, but the town itself sure seemed to be bigger and to have more amenities. Maybe it all depends on which road you take through these places? At any rate, each of the four MAC towns that I visited seemed to be nice places. If you like high school sports, living in any of them would provide you with year-round entertainment!
I followed SR-66 south from Minster to Piqua, where I jumped onto I-75 for the run south to Dayton. The quick interstate ride home was pretty uneventful except for a brief traffic slowdown while rubberneckers oggled a big fire burning off to the right just south of the I-75/I-70 interchange. I cruised into my driveway about mid-afternoon, smiling from the day's journey. Now when I hear about some sports feat by a school from the Midwest Athletic Conference, I'll have a better appreciation and understanding of the towns that produced the athletes involved!
| Tale of the Tape | |
| Mileage | 163.5 |
| Moving Average | 52.5 |
| Overall Average | 47.3 |
| Total Time | 03:27:25 |
Updated Tuesday, 11-Nov-2008 15:16:45 CST.
Copyright 2007 by Kelvin Utendorf