The Eastern Connecticut Conference, a communal center for high school sports in this region for decades, was severed Thursday, losing four cornerstone schools.

Ledyard, East Lyme, Fitch and New London, citing the league's ongoing instability, agreed to form the Southeastern Connecticut Athletic Conference (SCAC), also entering a scheduling alliance with the 23-school Southern Connecticut Conference to fill schedules.

Ledyard athletic director Jim Buonocore said the SCAC could begin as soon as the winter of 2016, but would defer to the remaining ECC schools about the departure date.

"The 2015 fall schedules are set (in the ECC) and we will honor them," Buonocore said. "We are willing to let (the remaining ECC schools) decide when we leave. If they want us to stay through next year and hold us to the current policy, we will do that. We have no problem with that."

Stonington principal Mark Friese, the spokesperson for ECC principals, said Thursday, "We have no problem keeping (the four exiting schools) here through the 2015-16 school year. I have no ill will against them and would like to work with them. It might be better for everyone to start fresh in the fall of 2016 anyway."

Friese, however, did not rule out an earlier exit.

All ECC principals met Thursday morning to discuss the league's future. Friese said he learned of the SCAC's formation "before I even drove back to my office."

Friese said the principals had a "great talk," even voting as a league to rescind a strength-based scheduling format to which league officials agreed in January as well as other caveats to keep dialogue productive. Friese said the principals agreed to enrollment-based scheduling for divisional placement and strength-of-program mechanism for crossovers.

Friese said the four schools that ultimately decided to leave voted against the new measures.

"Nobody committed to the ECC long term. Nobody said, 'we're all in,'" Friese said. "So the fact that four schools decided to leave doesn't surprise me. I just didn't think it would happen this fast."

One attendee at the meeting said officials from the four schools "huddled together in the hallway and ignored the rest of us" at the meeting's conclusion.

Fitch principal Joe Arcarese said of his school's decision to leave, "As difficult as it was to come to this decision to leave the ECC, it was the right choice for our students and our community. Our athletes deserve a fair opportunity to compete, and given the current instability in the ECC, we couldn't be certain that was going to be the case if we stayed."

Ledyard principal Amanda Fagan said the four founding members of the SCAC would be open to expansion, saying, "Certainly we value the relationships we've established over the years with other local schools, and we would welcome the opportunity to build upon some of those relationships in the SCAC as other schools apply to join us."

The only rivalries SCAC schools are willing to maintain at the moment are Thanksgiving football games. There are no plans as of yet to schedule ECC schools in any other sports, meaning, for example, that Waterford won't be playing East Lyme in anything else but Thanksgiving football, if the schools agreed.

Buonocore said the four SCAC schools would play each other and fill the remainder of schedules with SCC opponents. SCAC schools would require fewer crossovers if more schools of local origin join. The SCC schedules crossovers by program strength.

"We think the SCAC is a great fit for some other schools in a state of flux," Buonocore said. "We'd love to expand as a league. Certainly, it would be the premier league in southeastern Connecticut."

SCC commissioner Al Carbone said there isn't a fixed number of games in non-football playing sports that his league could provide the SCAC's four schools.

"I can't tell you that right now," Carbone said. "Right now they have four teams. What if they get to seven teams? How many games are they looking for? My conversation with them is if you're going to ask for as many as 10 games (for each team in non-football sports), that's unrealistic because of our league schedule. Now if you're looking for (a few), that's doable.

"I think the misconception in high school athletics is that everyone looks at their own self and asks, 'can I get winnable games. I can't play that team in this-or-that.' No, that's not what it's about. It's about looking for competitive games. ... What we're doing is making our league stronger by getting our schools competitive games."

Bacon Academy, Montville, St. Bernard, Stonington, Waterford and Wheeler applied to the Shoreline Conference late last month, amid nearly a year of turmoil within the ECC. Member schools debated league alignment, scheduling practices, opt outs, and enrollment disparities. In addition, seven northern schools from the ECC are awaiting word from the North Central Connecticut Conference.

"We have no desire to be the smallest school among all the big ones," Friese said, alluding to whether Stonington might join the SCAC. "We'd be pretty close to the smallest school. It doesn't entice me at all."

Waterford athletic director Dave Sousa said, "We are going to explore any and every option. We need a home."

Sousa also expressed "disappointment" over the treatment of Norwich Free Academy, the league's largest school, that was left out of the SCAC plans. Other league officials called NFA athletic director Gary Makowicki "the glue" that has kept the teetering ECC together this long.

"This caught us by surprise," Makowicki said. "I'll need to sit down with my administrators and discuss our options."

Friese said Stonington and other remaining schools have much to discuss. That includes keeping what remains of the league together, which could be as many as 14 schools: the 13 that applied elsewhere and NFA.

Several of Makowicki's colleagues discussed the possibility of NFA remaining in the ECC, despite the enrollment disparity. Several league sources said the ECC would "take care of" NFA in any way they could as a function of solidarity.

"I'm open to keeping NFA," Friese said. "They've been great partners in all this for years."

m.dimauro@theday.com

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