Conference realignment talks relayed to school board

Nodaway Valley Activities Director Sara Honnold presented information to the school board last Tuesday during their regular meeting in Greenfield telling them where conference realignment talks are at right now.

The district has until Aug. 1 to respond to an invitation received from the Western Iowa Conference, which currently includes nine schools, all located west of Nodaway Valley. In all, 10 schools received invitations to join the WIC.

Honnold reported she met with many of the NV activities department’s coaches and sponsors earlier in July to gauge their interest in leaving the Pride of Iowa Conference — which NV has belonged to since 1997 — and joining the WIC. During that meeting, she reviewed what set these talks in motion. She also shared various data related to activities and opportunities the POI provides and what the WIC might provide. Enrollment and activity trends at NV were compared with other schools in both conferences being considered, as was facility availability, competitiveness at the varsity level and travel distances.

A survey showed 78.9% of those who responded from within the activities department are open to exploring other conference affiliation, Honnold said.

For the upcoming school year, Nodaway Valley has a BEDS (ninth through 11th grade) enrollment of 167. That makes them the largest in the POI and the middle of the pack if they were to transition today to the WIC.

A new, small wrinkle is that Honnold told the school board she was going Wednesday to present information about Nodaway Valley to the West Central Activities Conference. There were four schools due to be there with three of them being current POI schools. On Thursday after that meeting, Honnold told the Free Press she had no new news to report.

With Des Moines Christian and Woodward-Granger already locked in to leave the WCAC, ACGC, Earlham, Interstate 35 (Truro), Madrid, Ogden, Panorama, Pleasantville, Van Meter and West Central Valley remain.

The invitation that remains on the table is still to the WIC. Travel to these schools for NV would average of 75.4 miles, compared to 55 miles to POI schools. Travel to WCAC schools would average 48.2 miles.

“You wouldn’t have any of those almost two-hour road trips, which can be hard on a team,” Honnold said of the WCAC. “We play a lot of these teams anyway, and they’re teams we’re pretty competitive with.”

Honnold said driving distance is not the only challenge for Nodaway Valley, if they were to remain in the POI. Scheduling is equally as difficult because there are four schools that field 8-player football programs. With NV at the 11-player level, it makes scheduling junior high football games challenging because many POI schools only schedule conference opponents for these games. In other sports, the consideration becomes whether or not the smaller opponents have participation levels that allow them to field a junior varsity or even freshmen squad in sports such as volleyball or basketball.

On the survey, coaches and sponsors cited “strong competition” as the top consideration that should be made when deciding a conference.

Other considerations listed were a conference’s scheduling format for activities, which can impact the ability to schedule out-of-conference opponents; relationships with the other schools; how our community fits with others and non-athletic opportunities for students in activities, Honnold said.

The activities director added that it’s important to ask what happens if others leave the Pride of Iowa Conference. Would the POI remain a viable conference? She conjectured to the board that it might not if membership dwindles too much more (Interstate 35, Pleasantville and Bedford have all seceded from the league in the last five years).

Honnold said that if the West Central Activities Conference was to formally invite Nodaway Valley, the same process utilized for the Western Iowa Conference invitation would be used.