STATUS
1/13/14
Newspaper coverage of this basketball season may be the worst in conference history. Through games played 1/11/14, no box scores have been provided for 12 games. Furthermore, scores are not even available for two games.
12/25/13
The project is finally done! All sports for all years have information. I may go back and try to back fill some information. Volleyball, baseball, and softball reporting has been the sketchiest so those are where the biggest holes exist. For some reason, Western Reserve basketball reporting has several holes, even in recent years. Plymouth has some holes as well because the school district sits in Huron and Richaland Counties and neither the Reflector or News Journal have complete information. Hope you enjoy and if you see any errors, please send me an E-Mail.
3/3/13
Things are really going to slow down for awhile. I'm at a period where the Norwalk Reflector is only carried on the system at the Norwalk Library, as opposed to microfilm. Unfortunately, there is only one computer dedicated to viewing the information. This same computer is the only one available that has a CD-ROM so it is very popular for downloading music. Needless to say, a lot of people want to use this computer. I'm working on other options.
12/27/12
Special thanks to Andrew Ebbeskotte. He has a great high school boys basketball website at www.crawfordcountybasketball.com and his site is what got me started on this project. He forwarded me detailed FC boys basketball information for 2001 forward. This will save lots of time when I get to those years.
11/19/12
Into the 90's now. Plymouth has been difficult to cover because neither the Norwalk Reflector or Ashland Times Gazette adopted them as a local school. Black River is about to leave the conference which will take the number of schools back to 8. The southern schools have dominated softball since it became a conference sport. I will backfill baseball and softall once I reach the end and try to compile conference records for each year. If you include doing the research and then creating the web pages, each year takes about 20-25 hours. But it's been a great experience. Can't wait to start each year to see how everything played out.
7/4/12
Nearing the half-way point. The Firelands Conference has been in place for 52 years and I have just finished the 1980-81 season. Girls sports reporting is getting better but not nearly as good as it is now. Still have some holes that I will have to go back and research using sources other than the Ashland Times Gazette and Norwalk Reflector. I will try to fill in holes after I get caught up to current year. Figure it's better to get the bulk of the information on the site before using resources to hunt down missing information.
5/27/12
The website is finally live. I am now researching the late 70's. Girls sports are in full swing with volleyball and basketball starting in 1974-75. Girls track started in 1975-76 and cross county started in 1978-79. Softball won't start until 1985-86. Girls sports reporting remains hit and miss.
5/6/12
Started this project in December, 2011. I am currently researching the mid- 70's. Girls sports have just started and the reporting is pretty sketchy. Also, golf moved from a spring sport to a fall sport. Baseball still has a championship games between the North Division (Edison, Monroeville, St. Paul, Western Reserve) winner and South Division (Black River, Mapleton, New London, South Central) winner.