got ya, i guess I was referring to a true 3rd High school which at this point could be in 10 years if they keep growing the way they are.
Iowa High School BEDS count 24-25
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got ya, i guess I was referring to a true 3rd High school which at this point could be in 10 years if they keep growing the way they are.
Waterloo has been running that model for a few years now and that's exactly what it is. A way for kids that may not be headed to college or kids that have a specific major in mind (nursing, etc) to explore and get hands on in the field and bank some credits to a technical degree while in high shool.
It's worked really well.
A few years ago, the rumor was that a third HS would be necessary by 2030-ish, and I think that's essentially what this innovation hub is. If memory serves, the existing high schools are supposed to get additions in coming years as well, in part due to the fact that Ankeny will be moving its 9th graders from existing 8th-9th grade buildings into the high schools.
All of this is to say that the fourth high school or third athletic program is probably a long way off.
Agree with these as well. My preference would've been for Ames to get something put together with Urbandale, Indianola and Norwalk for sure, maybe DCG. Then maybe have another division with the DM metros, some of the other smaller schools you suggest, or some hybrid. To me, Ames, Urbandale, Norwalk and Indianola are all those teams that aren't the CIML giant suburb schools, but they also aren't the DMPS schools that struggle to be competitive. You could make a case DCG is on their way and a better fit with the current CIML, but I'd be happy with them too.
I've only got a couple more years of kids in sports, so I'll not probably care too much beyond that. But barring something drastic like that, then I do hope either Urbandale or a consolidated Waterloo, or both join.
The schools are already solving their own problems by finding (or at least attempting to find) better fits in terms of whatever priority they see fit -- size, geography, competition. Why should the state associations step in?
Look at how spread out some of the football districts are (Atlantic-Nevada and Harlan-Knoxville, for one), then imagine some of those trips happening multiple times every week once you load in all of the other sports and sub-varsity contests. Great, you've gained competition against similarly-sized schools. But you've also lost a bunch of time and money getting there.
If I'm the AD for some of these schools, I am probably not in a hurry to make any changes until we see how much more the voucher program is going to affect them.
The athletic union has messed up football from the start, they should have done what Missouri does and limit it to 4 team districts to cut down travel. Then said the schools the other 5 games will not count against you, so play whoever you want for those games. Since they are already at an 8 game schedule use week nine to begin the playoff, let every team in playing the reverse order of the sister district 1-4, 2-3 and so on. Doing this would solve a lot of long Friday night bus trips.
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The school board president in the town next to where I grew up is famous for saying “we will shut down before we merge with anyone”. And for some reason the whole town buys into it. They are surrounded by districts already merged and one dissolved. They have no leverage in relation to neighboring school districts yet act as if they have a long runway with class sizes in the teens and twenties.
In retrospect my hometown would’ve been much better off merging with them vs what the district is now, but it wasn’t an option at the time due to this mindset being around forever.
I’m afraid many school districts are run by boards that refuse to accept reality.
Your close. Indianola, Norwalk and DCG are going to end up in a conference together as "outliers". Urbandale is going to trending towards the conference Carlisle is in, Raccoon River. This may sound crazy but Urbandale is locked and Valley, Johnston and Waukee and im sure a little Dowling, already pull from their city. What i wrote is right from a recent high school AD meeting.
Of course football is worse. They have 7 classes, restrict members to a single class, and district size has to be the same in each class, give or take 1. With all those limiting factors it’s going to be terrible for travel.
Other sports mostly have 3-5 classes. Plus if you allow conference size to vary between something like 8-12 teams, and focus on membership within a percentage of BEDS within one another it would be drastically better in terms of travel and relative size of members. There will always be some trade off between travel and spread of BEDS among the members.
Schools are doing what they can, but they are dramatically limited by trying to shoehorn themselves into existing conferences. But football district travel is far worse not because the conference model is better. It's that football districts are forced to live within all the constraints that make travel a challenge. Football districts are literally optimized for travel after the constraints are put in. The only way to make it better is to consolidate and make fewer football classes.
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My high school was in Brookfield's conference (still is) and that was a haul. I think it was 2-1/2 hours or something like that on a bus.
If they don't clean house with the athletic leadership at West when the new school happens (if it happens) there's zero chance of Waterloo Leaving the MVC. I was sitting with the principal at a Freshman baseball game while that was all being discussed and outside of football which conferences don't matter for anymore anyway he was convinced they could compete in every other sport in the MVC. The reality is outside of volleyball, basketball and track they don't have enough kids to compete in any sports. They've had combined teams for cross country, soccer and swimming for both genders swimming. Wrestling should combine because both teams are forfeiting at 4-5 weights every meet. Then baseball and softball have 1 or 2 8th graders getting significant innings on varsity every summer.
That career center is outstanding with all the programs they offer. They're pulling kids in from districts all over the area. I know they have quite a few CF kids there and I know of a few from Jesup driving over for classes.
Waterloo West is a very big school...so if they are claiming they don't have enough kids to compete...they are talking about talent or something else! It isn't the number of students....they have that!
They have a lot of kids in the building sure, they don't have a lot of kids out for sports.
Yeah...I get that...could be a societal issue or it could be a building/culture issue? I know it isn't easy to change culture...but it can be done. Good leadership and passion...it can make a difference. Again, not easy but it can be done.
I think it's a little bit of a few things. Culture is a big thing here, outside of girls basketball and bowling it's hard to recruit a coach even to apply. Case in point baseball hasn't had a coach last more than a couple years and was looking for a head coach 2 years ago, had two guys apply. I know both of them and like them both but neither one of them had any business being a head varsity baseball coach. The AD ended up taking the team over on a supposedly interim basis. We're 2 years into him as the interim coach. There are good players in the program, had an all state catcher (who took the starting job as an 8th grader) and a couple D3 kids on the team who all graduated this year. I think a couple kids the year before ended up playing D3 as well but in those 2 years we've won 15 games. Granted the MVC in brutal in baseball at the top but they should accidentally win more than 1 game in the conference with sending 2 or 3 guys on to the next level every year.
Wrestling forfeited 4-5 weights at every meet this year, similar story as baseball, can't keep a coach to save their life. Swimming for the boys anyway had 12 kids out last year and that's for a team combined with 4 schools.
West might be the world leader in weeding out kids in 6th and 7th grade that they don't want challenging the kids that they want to play...
It's much easier to do in basketball than football, purely from needing a bigger roster in football. Waterloo West and DSM East are basically identical with enrollment and East has struggled with the same thing since basically forever. It's hard to compete when you can't get kids to show up to practice, or stay eligible.
This is the BEDS count thread, maybe research the counts before considering putting them in the same conference.
Norwalk 789
Knoxville 387
Norwalk is another 3A school bigger than Knoxville.
Probably right but DCG and Norwalk are growing a lot faster and will outgrow Indianola before long.
