North Tama’s new football district includes its southwesternmost opponents ever, extending down to a school in the village of Norwoodville.
Where is Norwoodville, you ask? Well, it certainly was not a place I have mapped out in the recently updated school directions booklet (available download on demand, just click!). It’s the technically unincorporated part of Polk County southeast of the northeast mixmaster centered at the intersection of Northeast 29th Street and Broadway/Northeast 46th Avenue.
But for purposes of this blog post, it is the home of Grand View Christian School, a private school that opened in 2014 after Grandview Park Baptist Church stopped running a school and Saydel closed Norwoodville Elementary. However, that is not where the football field is. The North-Tama-at-Grand-View game, whenever it takes place, will be at Saydel High School, on Northeast 54th Avenue between US 69 and IA 415 half a mile north of the interstate.
Colfax-Mingo is another total newcomer a good hour and a half from Traer. GVC and C-M are super-outliers in the new Class A District 5, which otherwise is reasonably compact and has familiar names.
There are only seven districts per class in the upcoming two-year set, opening up two of 16 playoff spaces to at-large teams caught in a three-way 6-1 logjam that’s bound to occur somewhere. The playoffs are getting their brackets back, which completely negates my need to reverse-engineer them.
(Also, congratulations to West Des Moines Valley on its 2016 and 2017 district championships, because that opponent list is unfair, especially with Newton, the smallest enrollment in 4A.)