Southeast Iowa Conference Realignment

By JOE SPENCER

jspencer@thehawkeye.com

The SEI Superconference will realign into a pair of 10–team divisions beginning this fall, according to sources from member schools.

The conference will scrap its 3–division format in favor of North and South Divisions. A reduction in the number of member schools brought on by the closing of Keokuk Cardinal Stritch High School and the merger of West Point and Fort Madison Aquinas high schools into Holy Trinity prompted the move.

Current West schools WACO and Pekin will move to the North, joining Columbus, Highland, Iowa Mennonite School, Lone Tree, Louisa–Muscatine, Mediapolis, Wapello and Winfield–Mount Union. Remaining West schools Cardinal, Central Lee, Fairfield Maharishi, Harmony and Van Buren will head to the South, joining Danville, Holy Trinity, New London, Notre Dame and West Burlington.

The realignment will pertain to volleyball, basketball, track and field, softball, baseball and golf. Wrestling and cross country will remain as one large division and football districts are devised by the state.

"It's a done deal," Mediapolis athletics director Lyle McConnell said. "We had a committee of athletic directors vote on how to approach the number of schools in the conference dropping from 22 to 20.

"There was some unrest in the past about schools playing different teams in their divisions in different sports. We wanted to have divisions that remained the same in different sports to develop conference rivalries and make sure schools are playing the same teams. Right now, I'm not sure of the names of the divisions. It might be North and South or they may have separate conference names within the SEI Superconference alliance."

McConnell said there was sentiment among some of the conference schools to break away from the SEI Superconference alliance completely, but member schools are committed to the two–division format for the next two years.

"We just completed scheduling for the next two years, so it will not change again in that time," he said. "But there is a chance that schools could vote to break away from the superconference alliance after that."

Central Lee athletics director Clay Vass applauded the realignment and is among those in favor of keeping the superconference alliance intact.

"I feel schools in what will be the southern division are comfortable with this," he said. "Strictly from our perspective at Central Lee, when we were playing in the West against Cardinal and Pekin we had some long road trips. I think we are moving into a situation where we are playing schools in an area that we have more of a competitive rivalry with. Most of the people that live in Donnellson work in Burlington or Fort Madison and will like playing schools from that area. We will also cut down on travel time and costs."

"I hope the (conference) remains intact more for non–athletics reasons. We have a lot of science, art, music and other cultural programs that benefit from the alliance. At Central Lee we have great participation in these cultural programs, and they would suffer greatly from a split."

McConnell said the conference remains committed to its current conference tournament format for the next two years as well. But scheduling basketball will change slightly.

"We will move to a 15–game schedule in boys and girls basketball," McConnell said. "Teams will play six of their nine division opponents twice and have one game against the other three. Two more games will be in the conference tournament, and then there will be four nonconference games."

The new format brought about drastic change for volleyball scheduling, bumping up the number of conference dates from eight to 10.

"For schools like us and New London, who play a lot of weekend tournaments in volleyball, we had to get creative to stay in the tournaments," McConnell said. "We had to drop one tournament, but we will remain in the others because our coaches like them."