Conference realignment taking shape
DALTON VITT/DAILY FORUM
Nodaway-Holt junior running back Cory Rosenbohm tallied 175 rushing yards and a touchdown in the Trojans’ 50-26 upset of Mound City Friday, Oct. 10. The Nodaway-Holt R-VII School Board voted Wednesday night to co-op with South Holt for football for the 2015-16 season under the SHNH Spartans banner.
The shift in the 8-Man football landscape started earlier this month when the Grand River Conference expanded and announced the additions of St. Joseph Christian, Trenton, North Andrew and Pattonsburg for the 2016-17 school year.
That sent ripple effects through the Platte Valley Conference and the Highway 275 Conference — the two conferences in which all of the rural Nodaway County schools call home.
With North Andrew and Pattonsburg exiting the PVC, that leaves just four schools — DeKalb, South Nodaway, Southwest Livingston and Stewartsville — as football playing members, putting the conference’s future up in the air.
And with Stanberry, Albany and Worth County — who were football members only — moving out of the Highway 275 Conference and into the GRC’s new 8-Man division along with North Andrew, Pattonsburg and St. Joseph Christian, the 275 is also handcuffed about the future. The Grand River Conference has expanded to include 15 schools with Milan’s inclusion Wednesday night and will have both an 11-Man division and an 8-Man division.
The Highway 275 Conference, which had just six football playing members after the three-team exodus, took another hit size-wise Wednesday night as the Missouri State High School Activities Association officially approved a football cooperative for Nodaway-Holt and South Holt, a pair of schools 22 miles apart that combined to go 2-18 last season, for the 2015-16 school year.
“With anything the way enrollment and things are changing in rural educational communities, I think anything we can do that makes the experience more positive is the best option,” Nodaway-Holt Superintendent Karma Coleman said. “… The bottom line is it was a good decision for the kids because we weren’t having numbers to field teams.”
Coleman said the R-VII School Board voted Wednesday to call the co-op the SHNH Spartans — keeping with the historic warrior theme the schools currently use with their Trojan and Knight mascots.
The two schools will split hosting duties with home games being played in both Graham and Oregon
Coleman said uniforms and colors would be decided at a later time, but that Nodaway-Holt head coach Josh Petersen, who has a 12-18 record in three seasons at the helm of the Trojans (2-8 last season), would serve as the cooperative’s head coach.
The co-op will also allow for the Spartans to schedule junior varsity quarters, something that came at a premium with low numbers in both programs.
“We were barely able to have enough players for teams, therefore people get injured more easily because they’re playing in positions they’re not ready for,” Coleman said. “It helps prevent injuries. It also allows us the opportunity to have JV, which helps the kids grown into those positions, and then of course it makes a much more competitive varsity team.”
South Nodaway Superintendent Johnnie Silkett, who also serves as president of the Platte Valley Conference, said preliminary talks have begun about the future of the league and that he has reached out to the Highway 275 Conference about combining the two conferences to create a nine-team league for football.
“I think everybody’s eager to do something together, it’s just a matter of what that is and working out details,” Silkett said. “Where it leads I don’t know yet, but we’re having discussions at least to what our reactions are to the GRC movements.”
Silkett said he, along with Jefferson C-123 Superintendent Tim Jermain and Travis Dittemore, the Buchanan County R-IV School District superintendent, which includes DeKalb, will meet with Highway 275 officials on Thursday, March 5 to present a proposal for merging and “to talk about our futures.”
“Where it leads, it leads,” Silkett said. “I feel positive about it.”
Possibly furthering the shakeup, Silkett said South Nodaway and Jefferson, which co-op for football, have reached out to Northeast Nodaway, which is currently in a cooperative with Worth County, to join up and create a three-team co-op complete with a new name and colors, similar to what East Atchison (Tarkio and Fairfax) and North-West Nodaway (North Nodaway and West Nodaway) have done in recent years with differing levels of success.
North-West Nodaway went 8-4 and advanced to the 8-Man semifinals this past fall in its first year of the agreement. East Atchison, which formed prior to the 2013-14 school year, went 3-8 this past season after an inaugural 5-5 campaign.
“With the GRC moving out so to speak, in our new situation we wanted to see if Northeast Nodaway is interested in joining with Jefferson and us,” Silkett said. “…We just felt we were trying to bolster our numbers and create something that’s sustainable down the road, where all three schools have equal say.
“We offer something close, something where all three of us are similar size, we’re similar in our makeup. I think it would be good, but again, it’s up to Northeast Nodaway and what’s best for them.”
