With the end of the school year coming to a close, now is a good time to expect to see some new league switching, realignment, or expansion news as most schools are required to give a two-year notice to leave or join a conference.

As rumors and speculation and last rites continue to be spoken on the Northern Ohio League, one local school recently made its presentation in hopes of filling one of the two spots left vacant by Galion and Upper Sandusky's exit to the North Central Conference.

At a meeting Tuesday, Sandusky High School officials, led by athletic director Suzie Sackett and principal Dan Poggiali, presented their case for membership to NOL officials as the Blue Streaks attempt to leave the Greater Buckeye Conference for a much better situation geographically and perhaps competitively.

So, how did it go?

"They did a nice job," one official from an NOL school said anonymously. "They brought a lot of information to the table about their athletic programs, enrollment figures and the city of Sandusky in general. It probably went as well as you could expect it to."

And while there is no immediate word if Sandusky will be accepted or when they could possibly be accepted, no other school is currently scheduled to make a sales pitch to the NOL. It is believed that the only school showing any kind of objection to Sandusky's admission to the league is Shelby, but even that isn't said to be overly stern-toned. At this point, the common observer has to believe it is a matter of time for the Streaks to help usher in a new era of the NOL, but time will tell.

It is believed that Marion Harding has also shown interest in joining, while overtures from the NOL were also made to the entire Sandusky Bay Conference minus Sandusky St. Mary, Lexington, Clear Fork and Vermilion to name several others.

As it is, most of the NOL is at least open to the idea of a six-team league for a while if nothing works out over the next couple years, which has led directly to Fostoria applying to the Suburban Lakes League, where they were denied membership over the winter.

However, the SLL has now looked into expanding to a 12-team league with a two-division format of a big school/small school setup with six teams in each division. That would allow Fostoria to get back into the picture, and privately there are some at Fostoria who are saying they are all but gone from the NOL and are simply awaiting the SLL's acceptance a second time around, but the jury is out on that one.

For the SLL's new format to work, they still have to grab four other schools besides Fostoria, including three "small" schools. Well, the clock is ticking in that regard so again, we'll see.

One thing that has been frustrating for me that I have referenced in the past in this blog is the way speculation gets out of hand in print and online outlets. All I keep hearing is how the NOL is dead, or that this school is going here or that school is going there, and on and on...

Yet here we sit, almost a HALF A YEAR later after most of this league switching news started getting reported and ALL we can confirm and know is this: Galion and Upper Sandusky are leaving the NOL for a difference conference.

That's it. Could a lot of the things being thrown out there, like the death of the NOL, still happen? Sure it could, but I've taken the mantra of going by what I see, and all I've seen to date since November is two schools leave the NOL. Anything else so far has been pure rumors and speculation. Heck, even Fostoria's athletic director himself recently admitted publicly he's heard nothing concrete about the SLL expansion since they were originally rejected in February...but again, as the school year ends we could see some real news develop out of this...

Finally.