It’s championship or bust for Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton — not only in softball, but for all but one of its sports teams, period.
The Spartans are a 1-seed playing in Fort Dodge today at noon. Seven hours later, in Audubon, the Audubon school board is scheduled to meet and approve athletics sharing agreements for everything except football. (EEHK added to Audubon’s numbers would bump up to 1A and be ineligible for the playoffs.)
Oh, and RAGBRAI is going through Elk Horn and Exira at the same time. Today. Right now.
Both KSOM-FM and the EEHK school district’s live feed have items about the meeting. EEHK will be the host for girls’ basketball; numbers are higher there and EEHK played in the state basketball tournament. Audubon will host boys’ basketball. This immediately raises the question in my mind about how exactly that will go, unless small schools aren’t doing girls at 6 PM and boys at 8 PM anymore.
This is ironic to a degree because half a century ago, the issue of whether the town of Kimballton would join the school district already named Elk Horn-Kimballton or Audubon took 16 years and four Iowa Supreme Court cases.
Although Elk Horn is technically in Shelby County, I would suggest “Audubon County” for the name of the combined teams. Because, although the shared superintendent of the schools told KSOM these talks “do not involve whole-grade sharing, closing school buildings, or changes to academic programming,” the unspoken word is yet.