Allen County Athletic Conference
| Allen County Athletic Conference (ACAC) |
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|---|---|
| Established | 1956 |
| Region | Indiana |
| Locations | |
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The Allen County Athletic Conference (ACAC) is a seven-member Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) 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.
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 (and two of those were new consolidations). The conference responded by going outside county borders by admitting Norwell (itself a newly consolidated school) 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.
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