KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
Yep. The Sioux Interstate Conference existed from 1972 to 1997 (or 98, I can’t tell if it dissolved before or after the 1997-98 school year).
Charles City looking to form new conference after racial issues
- Thread starter simply1
- Start date
And the Council Bluffs schools used to be with Omaha schools. But that was 25+ years ago.
Going by football...
1997 - Sioux Interstate
1998 - Independent
1999 - Independent
2000 - Missouri River
Council Bluffs schools were in the River Cities (with Nebraska schools) through the 1999 season, then joined up with SC to form the MRAC.
How would it work though? Are they competing to make state in Iowa, Minnesota, or Wisconsin?
Postseason tournaments in Iowa aren't broken down by conference, anyway. Or at least they weren't when I last lived there in 2018. Maybe seeding gets a little trickier, but teams already play unbalanced schedules. And they'd still have plenty of non-conference games against in-state competition.
Exactly. Post season is based on districts which have nothing to do with conferences.
No reason a conference couldn’t cross state lines.
I grew up with Sioux interstate conference and I think it was pretty great for football compared to other options Sioux City has. As a wrestler it wasn’t great because Sioux Falls rarely had good wrestling teams, wrestling schedule improved for those schools when it stopped, even much smaller schools around Sioux City generally way better at wrestling than Sioux Falls, at least in 80s, 90s, early 00s.
For some sports post-season district seeding is based on points you get for wins with the amount of points being based on the class of the team you beat. I don’t think you would get any points for wins against out of state teams.
So seed them with a smaller sample. They'll still play in-state teams, just not as many of them as other schools. Either that, or figure out how to translate the classes between Iowa and surrounding states. They shouldn't be forced to play in a conference with much smaller schools or pay through the nose to bus their teams to similarly-sized schools that are ridiculously far away simply because the IHSAA doesn't want to do a little problem solving when it comes to seeding.
Coaches do the majority of postseason seeding meetings now. The point system is being/has been phased out almost entirely.
But Iowa schools can apparently be members of conferences that are based in other states.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
The IHSAA was able to adjust their RPI system for football to count games against out-of-state schools. I’m sure it’s possible to adjust seeding in other sports to include those contests if they wanted to.
Whiting plays baseball and softball in the Rolling Valley, but they have other sports in the Frontier Conference out of Nebraska.
