Allen County Athletic Conference


The Allen County Athletic Conference is a seven-member Indiana High School Athletic Association conference. While all of its charter schools are and were located in Allen County, it also has member schools from Adams, Jay, and Wells counties. The ACAC, along with the Porter County Conference, are the only two county conferences left in existence.

History

The Allen County Athletic Conference began with nine schools in Allen County in 1956. The schools were smaller, rural schools, with the exception of Elmhurst, the sole Fort Wayne school that wasn't included in the Fort Wayne City Series. The conference was hit hard by consolidation, and the nine original schools were down to four by the 1968 season. The conference responded by going outside county borders by admitting Norwell in 1967, followed by Adams Central, Churubusco, and Eastside in 1968. The rebooted conference now expanded well outside of the Allen County footprint, including schools from Adams, DeKalb, Wells, and Whitley counties. All of the schools now sponsored football, and competition in that sport began in 1969.
The conference went to a two division format in 1971 with the addition of new school Homestead and Southern Wells. That format ended in 1975, as Homestead left for the Northeastern Indiana Athletic Conference, followed by Eastside leaving for the Northeast Corner Conference in 1980. The breakup of the NEIAC in 1989 led to a wide-scale realignment of conferences in Northeast Indiana, as schools looked to realign themselves with rivals of similar enrolments. The ACAC became the home for mid-sized schools, while the Northeast Corner housed small schools, and the newly formed Northeast Hoosier Conference became the stable for the largest non-Fort Wayne schools. Carroll and Norwell left that year for the NEHC, while Churubusco left for the NECC. They were replaced by NEIAC schools Bluffton and South Adams. Garrett, becoming too large for the Northeast Corner, moved to the Allen County league in 2005.
Jay County joined the conference beginning with the 2014-15 school year. However, the conference shrank down to seven schools in 2015, as Garrett moved to the Northeast Corner Conference in 2014, and Leo joined six of the eight Northeast Hoosier Conference high schools in a new conference in 2015.

Membership

Current members

  1. Adams Central played in the ACAC and the EWVC concurrently for 1965-66, the final year for the EWVC.
  2. Woodlan was known as Woodburn before 1959.

    Former members

  3. Lafayette Central became part of Roanoke High School in 1963. Roanoke itself consolidated into Huntington North in 1966, taking Lafayette Township with it. The township then split off from HNHS to become part of Southwest Allen County Schools in 1971.

    Membership timeline


DateFormat = yyyy
ImageSize = width:750 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = from:1956 till:2020
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5
Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb
id:line value:black
id:bg value:white
PlotData=
width:15 textcolor:black shift: anchor:from fontsize:s
bar:1 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text:Arcola
bar:2 color:red from:1956 till:1960 text:Elmhurst
bar:3 color:red from:1956 till:1965 text:Harlan
bar:4 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text:Hoagland
bar:5 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text:Huntertown
bar:6 color:red from:1956 till:1963 text:Lafayette Central
bar:7 color:red from:1956 till:2015 text:Leo
bar:8 color:red from:1956 till:1968 text:Monroeville
bar:9 color:red from:1956 till:end text:Woodburn /Woodlan
bar:10 color:red from:1965 till:end text:Adams Central
bar:11 color:red from:1966 till:1967 text:Ossian
bar:12 color:red from:1967 till:1989 text:Norwell
bar:13 color:red from:1968 till:1989 text:Carroll
bar:14 color:red from:1968 till:1989 text:Churubusco
bar:15 color:red from:1968 till:1980 text:Eastside
bar:16 color:red from:1968 till:end text:Heritage
bar:17 color:red from:1971 till:1975 text:Homestead
bar:18 color:red from:1971 till:end text:Southern Wells
bar:19 color:red from:1989 till:end text:Bluffton
bar:20 color:red from:1989 till:end text:South Adams
bar:21 color:red from:2005 till:2014 text:Garrett
bar:22 color:red from:2014 shift: till:end text:Jay County
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1956
TextData =
fontsize:L
textcolor:black
pos: # tabs:
text:"ACAC Membership History"

Division Format 1971-75

Sponsored Sports

Conference Championships

Football

Only tournament champions listed.

State titles

Adams Central Flying Jets (1)

Garrett Railroaders (1)

• Davona Runkel - Girls shot put

Southern Wells Raiders (1)