(Pulled out of the drafts folder from months ago. — Ed.)
I don’t dip into all the “conference realignment” on the high school level, mostly because there’s so much of it going on right now. In this case, it relates to the breakup of CMB athletics that I’ve been following, and also involves North Tama’s current conference.
Baxter has adopted the nickname of the Bolts (despite being the Bulldogs pre-sharing) and Collins-Maxwell will be the Spartans. Those were announced at the end of last year. Both will play 8-man football. What I missed was that each school is going to join the Iowa Star Conference.
When North Tama left the NICL for the Iowa Star in 2003, it was the southernmost school in a conference basically centered around Waterloo. Since then, it’s grown outward, but it also has divisions. These additions create a conference that spreads from the Minnesota border to the fringes of the Des Moines metro area. It’s nearly an hour from Riceville to the next nearest schools, Clarksville and Tripoli.
(And that LOGO…woof. Give me 30 minutes in Illustrator.)
The Iowa Star Conference will have 15 teams for one year, before CAL High School closes in 2018.