In 2002, North Tama was knocked down a peg in the football classifications, from Class 1A to Class A. The Redhawks bounced all over eastern Iowa in football districts, often ending up as the corner school in a far-flung region.
One full student generation (13 years) later, North Tama is in the most geographically compact district it’s had in a long time, reuniting with some old NICL opponents. It’s not because it got bigger, but because other districts got smaller — and smaller districts have vanished.
I took a look at what has happened to the 67 teams that made up Class A in 2002. (I saved a copy of the standings before the IHSAA’s website redesign flung a bunch of stuff from the 2000s into the abyss.)
Above and below: Shades of purple are consolidations or program-sharing, blue strikethroughs are in 8-player, and green is whole-grade-sharing with larger schools or do not have a team.
- Only a dozen schools, including North Tama, are unchanged from 2002 and still play in Class A in 2015. Four have been bumped up to Class 1A.
- A full third, 23, are now in 8-player, an option that was only in its second cycle in 2002.
- Six teams are now parts of four still playing in Class A, including LeMars Gehlen, which engaged in a private-school merger with Granville Spalding.
- Eight schools consolidated into four large enough to be in Class 1A now (including 2002 state champion Fredericksburg), two others are part of Class 1A schools, and one (Sac City) is part of a Class 2A school.
- Eight are in whole-grade sharing and no longer have high schools. CAL, which lost Dows in 2005, still has a high school but will not be fielding a team this year.
- Two are sharing sports only but play 8-player: Graettinger-Terril/Ruthven-Ayrshire, which in 2002 played as Graettinger and Lakeland (Ruthven-Ayrshire plus Terril).