New Hampton and Waukon to UIC. Cresco destroying the NEIC is pretty on point for them.
Charles City looking to form new conference after racial issues
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Jeez, the Northeast Iowa Conference was relatively unchanged for 100 years. Demographics really impacted it since I played - everyone was 3A (out of 4). Decorah was smaller than most of the others in the conference but now has fewer students than in my days but is larger than Waukon, Cresco, Oelwein and New Hampton because their enrollments have plummeted so much more.
There literally isn't another comparably sized school to Decorah within 45 minutes. Bizarre. All the growth in enrollments is in the Des Mones area and Iowa City - Cedar Rapids. With a few exceptions, most of the rest of the state is shedding population.
There literally isn't another comparably sized school to Decorah within 45 minutes. Bizarre. All the growth in enrollments is in the Des Mones area and Iowa City - Cedar Rapids. With a few exceptions, most of the rest of the state is shedding population.
Decorah literally added an entire school district in the early 00's (North Winn).
They have been much larger than Waukon, Cresco, and New Hampton for 20-30 years. Decorah as a town is nearly twice the size of the next largest (Cresco) of those towns, and kinda always has been. Waverly's even out ahead of Decorah. They've recently redone the size classifications as well. When those schools were 3A, Cresco, New Hampton, and Waukon were the smallest 3As. Now they're the bigger 2As.
The irony though is that Cresco, New Hampton, and Waukon would essentially become the Decorah and Waverly of the Upper Iowa. In football, Cresco is one of the largest 2A schools and Turkey Valley is 8 man. It's absurd for schools that far apart in enrollment to be conference mates.
What a take! Oelwein leaving a few years ago followed by the Charles City/Waverly SR feud and ultimate removal of WSR are the causes of the destruction of the conference. With Osage and North Fayette unwilling to join, a conference of 5 teams lacks viability.
Though a graduate from Crestwood, I have no love for the place. But to blame it is misguided in my opinion.
There are at least three schools districts in the UIC that really need to be shut down or consolidated with other districts, Turkey Valley, Elkader Central and West Central Maynard. The re-sized districts resulting from that will be better positioned with Crestwood, New Hampton (who could gain students from TV) and Waukon if those 3 join the UIC.
I'm not from Cresco but I've lived there for awhile and people seem pretty shocked by this move. Everyone I've talked to thinks playing in the UIC is kinda ridiculous given how much larger Crestwood is than any other current member. It really is Waverly in the NEIC all over again.
But they're leaving definitely isn't what eroded the conference. It started with Waverly being so much larger than the other schools and dominating them. Then add in Waverly's questionable behavior on a lot of fronts. Then Decorah adds North Winn and becomes closer to Waverly in enrollment. Oelwein drops out. Etc.
It's been a long, slow thing, but outside of the Waverly/CC thing, it's hard to say it's a school's fault. It's a bit weird that Waverly was in there to begin with.
But they're leaving definitely isn't what eroded the conference. It started with Waverly being so much larger than the other schools and dominating them. Then add in Waverly's questionable behavior on a lot of fronts. Then Decorah adds North Winn and becomes closer to Waverly in enrollment. Oelwein drops out. Etc.
It's been a long, slow thing, but outside of the Waverly/CC thing, it's hard to say it's a school's fault. It's a bit weird that Waverly was in there to begin with.
Turkey Valley is one of those districts (Riceville is in a similar position) that are really difficult to consolidate because they can't easily merge with any one other district. The most logical thing would be to split it 4 ways on a county line basis. Protivin goes to Howard-Winn; Lawler goes to New Hampton; St Lucas goes to North Fayette; Fort goes to South Winn. You just don't see that happen though.
North Winn didn't add much in terms of numbers to DHS' classes.
Yes, I know DHS has had higher enrollment than those 3 for 20+ years.
My point was that the drop In Oelwein, Cresco, New Hampton and Waukon must have been pretty stark compared to when I graduated, back in 1492 (roughly).
I know you're a Cresco guy; I was told back in the 1980s that while the town of Cresco was smaller than Decorah, the school enrollments were boosted b/c the district was geographically huge - all of Howard and part of Winneshiek, I think. Also, Luther's numbers sometimes distort the perceived size of Decorah, which I'd guess is around 6000 w/o the college.
Anyway, I just hope the Big D finds a solution without bankrupting it or keeping kids on buses 2 hours to go to conference games.
As long as I can remember Crestwood was more of a peer to Waukon and New Hampton than Decorah.
I was born in the 80's and that's when the big population drain in north Iowa was happening. Since the mid 90's, these schools have been in the same relative position to what they are today. So it's kind of amazing that they all put up with this gap for nearly (checks notes) 30 damn years.
I agree that it sucks for Decorah. I figured that Cresco, Waukon, and Decorah would always play each other. Hell, Cresco beat Decorah in football in 2022. It's more competitive than any of those schools have been with WSR.
That is a highly sensible solution and would likely require state intervention to facilitate. TV is obviously not the only school in the state with the same size and geographic issue. West Central Maynard could easily be split up amongst Oelwein, North Fayette Valley, Sumner-Fredericksburg, Wapsie Valley and maybe others as well.
Riceville (district I grew up in) is in a similar situation. Would need to be split between Howard-Winn, Osage, and St Ansgar.
Did Osage and North Fayette ever give a reason for not wanting to join? I can't think of one other then them being the big dogs in their current conferences.
Osage has (much) better geography in their current league. They would rack up more travel costs.
I don’t know if that was their reasoning, but it’s reality.
(I recovered 3 fumbles in 7th grade football - none of my own - against Riceville. That may have been the peak of my football career
)
Oelwein gets their brains beaten in by small schools, they didn't want any part of larger schools.
I think you're right that's where New Hampton ends up but they fit so much better size-wise in the NICL and with the way they do pods, the travel isn't awful at all.
They'd see Denver, Oelwein, Columbus, S-F, Wapsie, Union, Jesup and Dike most of the time.
Yeah, Oelwein played Crestwood this year in football and it was like 42-7 at half. Crestwood was a .500ish 2A squad.
Riceville… barf. Riceville can eat my shorts.
Don’t know much of the districts being discussed in this thread other than having been in the towns for RAGBRAI or driving through to meetings, etc. However you could swap out the district names in this thread with a number of district in areas I’m familiar with and it’s same story. So many consolidations that made sense 30-40 years ago now potentially needing redrawn for a number of reasons let alone conference affiliations.
School I graduated from absorbed half a district 10 years ago when it voted to disband due to enrollment and geography. Even with that numbers are less than half of what I graduated with.
Conferences in rural Iowa have gotten so spread out, especially if you are a 2A or above school. Can’t help but think much of Iowa needs to completely blow up district lines and go to splitting a county in half or one district for the county. Will never happen but would make more sense than some of the alphabet soup school names that exist today.
School I graduated from absorbed half a district 10 years ago when it voted to disband due to enrollment and geography. Even with that numbers are less than half of what I graduated with.
Conferences in rural Iowa have gotten so spread out, especially if you are a 2A or above school. Can’t help but think much of Iowa needs to completely blow up district lines and go to splitting a county in half or one district for the county. Will never happen but would make more sense than some of the alphabet soup school names that exist today.
