Trending
The Eastern Ohio Athletic Conference hasn't had the best of luck through three weeks of non-league play this season.
The eight-team league went 6-12 in non-league play with six possible games missed due to COVID-related cancellations.
Two of the wins came against a winless McDonald team that may struggle the rest of the way. Another win was by way of Minerva who will likely have problems winning a game this season. Valley Christian's win over Campbell (1-2) probably won't amount to much either as the Red Devils won't likely be competing week-to-week in the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference Gray Division.
The league's quality wins came by the way of Southern's opening win over Div. V Edison (2-1) and United's win over Div. V Crestview (1-2) on Friday. Those may be the only source of possible second-level points hauls for the entire league when it comes to the playoffs.
Granted the Ohio High School Athletic Association did expand the playoffs to 16 teams, but with all of the missing games and lack of notable wins the EOAC might already be looking at several teams missing the newly generous playoff field or a lot of road games.
Four teams in the league have zero wins as league play starts on Friday. Leetonia missed all of its first three games, Lisbon is 0-2, East Palestine is 0-3 and Wellsville is 0-1 having missed two games due to COVID.
The focus won't be on those teams this week though.
United (2-1) will host Andy Hake's Valley Christian (2-1) in what could be a significant indicator of just who will be the favorite going forward in the rest of the league schedule.
It's hard to talk about championships quite yet when COVID has wrecked schedules in this league because if any further cancellations pop up there will have to be hard decisions made on how to award the title or if any championship will be awarded at all.
This won't be the only league that will face that decision though.
EBC
The seven-team Eastern Buckeye Conference is launching league play this week for most of its teams and it seems like there are three notable contenders in the mix as Salem (3-0), West Branch (3-0) and Canton South (3-0) have all looked dominant in their first three appearances.
Those three teams have outscored opponents 409-118.
Salem won't start its league schedule for another week as the Quakers finish non-league play against winless Firestone on Friday at Sebo Stadium. The Quakers' first two league opponents in Alliance and Minerva also have no wins after the first three weeks of the season.
West Branch hosts Marlington to open league play on Friday.