County rivals WCDS, Wayne Christian join forces

By Rudy Coggins
Published in Sports on July 11, 2016 1:48 PM

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By RUDY COGGINS

rcoggins@newsargus.com

It's a meeting Michael Taylor is glad he "crashed."

Wayne Country Day faced the possibility of playing as an independent this calendar season, which would have left Taylor scrambling to find opponents to fill schedules in 23 different sports on the middle, junior varsity and varsity levels.

That fear no longer exists.

The Chargers, in fact, will compete in a revamped version of the Coastal Plains Independent 1-A Conference. The six-team league will consist of old members John Paul High School and Greenfield, and will welcome a cast of new schools -- county rival Wayne Christian, Community Christian and Christ Covenant.

"I caught word of it (and) I kind of invited myself to the athletics director meeting," said Taylor, who pitched WCDS as a possible fifth member to the four-school panel.

"It was kind of good just to get into a room with everybody, and sit down and talk about the differences of all the schools that are involved."

Wayne Christian and Community Christian parted ways with the Carolina Christian Conference for a variety of reasons. Although it's on a one-year probationary period and not eligible for the playoffs, Christ Covenant showed interest in finding a home for its vastly-growing athletics program.

Taylor inquired about Greenfield, which faced independent status like WCDS. His question generated some initial resisistance.

The group agreed to meet with Greenfield officials and voiced their concerns about players traveling from different areas just to play basketball at the school.

"We sat down and hashed it out," Taylor said. "We didn't want to leave Greenfield (out)."

ADs and headmasters from each school met and restructured the CPIC by-laws, and everyone involved approved the scenarios that were proposed in the 2 1/2-hour meeting. Taylor said the geography of the conference -- each school is within a 40-minute drive of each other -- drew praise from administrators due to problems with early dismissals and long trips in their previous conferences.

Loss of class time and travel time has been reduced.

The additional schools provide the opportunity to compete for CPIC tournament titles in boys' and girls' soccer, boys' and girls' cross country, boy's golf, boys' and girls' basketball, swimming and baseball. The regular-season champion earns the automatic bid to the N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association playoffs.

"It gives our kids an opportunity to compete, if not at the state level, at least at the conference level for tournament championships," Taylor said. "The new conference will bring new rivalries and I think it will be better for everyone."

It could be a one-shot deal for WCDS, however.

The school's enrollment continues to grow and Taylor said the school may move to the 2-A ranks for the 2017-18 calendar year. He's began to explore options and spoken with officials from the split-classification Coastal Independent Conference and Coastal Rivers Conference.

The CIC requires less travel time. The CRC stretches from Lenoir to New Hanover counties.

The school board, along with headmaster Todd Anderson, wants to see continued growth. As the enrollment increases, Taylor said more programs can be added to benefit the students outside of athletics.

"The numbers ... that's kind of a stress thing for me right now," Taylor said. "At Christmas, when I start doing the schedule for next year (2017-18), I have to know are we going to make the plunge this year, or are we going to wait again?

"I want to grow, but athletically I want to stay 1-A. As a school community, we're growing and that's what we need to do."

At least, for now, Wayne Country Day still has a home in the CPIC -- a league that's existed for nearly four decades.