Interstate 8, Kishwaukee River Conference enter into football partnership

The Interstate 8 and the Kishwaukee River Conference announced a football-only partnership on Friday, combining the two conferences into groups to take effect in the 2021-22 school year.

Group A will be comprised of Harvard, Johnsburg, Marengo, Plano, Richmond-Burton, Rochelle and Sandwich. Sycamore, Kaneland, LaSalle-Peru, Morris, Ottawa, Woodstock and Woodstock North will make up Group B.

Sycamore athletic director Chauncey Carrick said the conferences checked with the IHSA, and the winner of each group will receive an automatic berth into the postseason.

Plano AD Jim Schmidt said that discussions started in February of last year, but went quiet once the coronavirus pandemic hit. Things heated up again around Thanksgiving when Marengo AD Nathan Wright called Schmidt to ask if he wanted to renew their contract for 2021-2022. It culminated with Friday’s announcement when principals signed off on the deal.

“We have always played Marengo as our Week 2 opponent as a non-conference, and we were talking about whether we’d renew our contract or not, and I said what do you think if we did this?” Schmidt said. “Once the districts didn’t come together with the IHSA, I thought about how we can create our own district.”

The key for Schmidt is it puts Plano’s program back competing against enrollment-similar schools in football, with 4A schools playing against 4A schools to get to the playoffs. Plano went 2-7 in 2019 in its first year in the reconfigured Interstate Eight Conference, as one of the smallest schools in the league.

Schmidt said it makes sense for Plano to compete in the Interstate Eight in other sports, with the geographical connection and the fact that they play schools like Sycamore and Kaneland in state competitions. But the same could not be said for football.

“We knew we would have to bite the bullet for a year before districts, but when districts got turned down we had to decide to stay in the conference or do something different. With our struggles playing against bigger schools, the future of our program was in jeopardy,” Schmidt said. “To be fair to our community, to have a successful program we were going to have to make a change. I can now go to my community and say we’re playing tough schools, but they’re our size and schools we could see in the postseason.”

La Salle-Peru athletic director Dan Le said the groups based on enrollment were beneficial to the Cavaliers as well.

“It just makes sense in terms of matching schools up a little better by enrollment,” Le said. “There are some larger schools that will be able to compete against each other. That’s what we’d see in the playoffs anyway. We’re typically a 5A school, so to be able to play more 5A schools is beneficial to us. For the smaller schools in the Interstate 8 and Kishwaukee River, for them to play each other makes sense as well. Size wise, it makes sense for all the schools involved.”

Ottawa — as has been the case for the past five and a half decades since La Salle-Peru joined the Pirates in the now-defunct North Central Illinois Conference — is in the same boat as its archrival. Athletic director Mike Cooper says conference stability is the benefit for the I-8′s larger schools.

“The truth of the matter is, conferences break up because of football,” Cooper said. “If we can do something to make this work for those (smaller schools), we should do it.

“Their enrollments are considerably smaller than the rest of us. The ability to help them out football-wise playing schools similar in enrollment is win-win for everybody, and hopefully we’ll still have the opportunity to play Plano and Sandwich. ... We really enjoy having Plano and Sandwich with us.

“There are a lot of things we have in common between our eight (schools in the I-8), and we’d like to do everything we can to keep everyone together.”

The six-team KRC had struggled with finding nonconference games for the last two seasons. The KRC had some teams play each other twice, while Woodstock North went to Norwood, Ohio for a Week 3 game in 2019.

The new set-up will greatly benefit the KRC.

“It offers stability and consistency in terms of scheduling football year-to-year,” Johnsburg AD Ted Juske said. “Weeks 1 and 2 are the easiest to schedule and find games. Essentially, we’re looking for Weeks 1 and 2 now.”

Carrick said there’s no name for the partnership, but it might have one in the future. All-conference selections will be determined by group.

“There are several factors that brought these groups together,” Carrick said. “One is discrepancy in enrollment. This allows for enrollment to match up. It also allows for the KRC, with six teams trying to find teams to schedule became a challenge. This helps their scheduling and ours as well.”

Each team will play the other six teams in their group along with one crossover, allowing room for schools to schedule two nonconference games with traditional rivals.

“Seven games is what both conferences was looking for,” Carrick said. “Speaking for us at Sycamore, that was important to keep DeKalb on our schedule.”

Le said the only concern for L-P was lengthy trips to Woodstock (98.5 miles one way) and Woodstock North (97.3), but said the Cavs would travel to only one of those schools each season and the benefits outweighed any negatives.

The 2020 fall season was delayed until this spring as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The season is currently slated to open March 5, but the IHSA schedule is expected to change with all winter sports still on hold. The IHSA said this week it hopes to release a revised schedule following its Jan. 27 board meeting.