Good-bye West Branch, Pekin and 90-mile trips in the fall. Hello SICL Conference rivals.
District assignments for high school football were announced today (Tuesday) by the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) and there were some major shake-ups regarding Plainsman football. Belle Plaine is now a Class A school. Last year, it was in Class 1A. Last year, there were eight districts in Class 1A with eight schools each. Next season, there will be eight districts in Class A, but four of them have only six schools and the other four have seven.
Belle Plaine is in District Six with BGM, HLV, Iowa Valley, Lynnville-Sully, Montezuma and North Mahaska. All are members of the SICL Conference.
With just six district games, there will be room for three non-district teams on this fall’s schedule. Coach Todd Bohlen said those teams are yet to be determined. The final decision will be made by the IHSAA, but the state association has asked schools to contact some non-district teams about their availability and then submit the names of those schools to the IHSAA. The final schedules for all classes should be finished by the end of February or the first part of March, Bohlen said.
The coach admitted he was a bit shocked that the Plainsmen had been knocked down to Class A. Class designations are based on school enrollments in grades 9-11. Belle Plaine has 145 students. The largest schools in the class have 151 students. Belle Plaine will be the second-largest school in the district, behind Iowa Valley’s 150 students. BGM is next with 137, followed by North Mahaska, 132; Lynnville-Sully, 128; Montezuma, 103 and HLV, 99 students.
Familiarity with the top athletes in the district should be a plus in game preparation. Bohlen added that the Plainsman JV team has played these schools for the past several years. BGM and North Mahaska should have a good number of seniors on their teams next season, he said.
It could be a fun season, with the natural conference rivalries spilling onto the football field and the fact that three of the six other teams in the district are 20 miles or less from Belle Plaine. In fact, the farthest team is Lynnville-Sully, at just 53 miles.
The coach said he hopes that the Plainsmen could keep some of the teams on the schedule for non-district games that they have seen in the past, such as Highland-Riverside or Eddyville-Blakesburg. Some other possibilities include East Marshall, Don Bosco, AGWSR or Tipton.