Northeast Iowa Conference saga takes a new turn: Waverly-Shell Rock voted out

The saga of conference realignment in northeast Iowa has taken another spin.

A league that appeared to be on life support only a week ago, the Northeast Iowa Conference might survive, after all.

And it might expand.

The NEIC’s executive board — comprised of the six school superintendents — voted by a 5-1 margin Monday to remove Waverly-Shell Rock from the NEIC.

“You look at our conference now, and Waverly-Shell Rock continues to grow,” said Mark Lane, superintendent of the Decorah Community School District. “The rest of us, we feel good if we remain stable.”

Waverly-Shell Rock has a BEDS number (enrollment of students in grades 9-11) of 596. The other schools are Decorah (430), Charles City (399), Crestwood (305), Waukon (286) and New Hampton (272).

“They have become so much different than the rest of us,” New Hampton superintendent Jay Jurrens said. “(WSR’s K-12) enrollment is 2,200 and ours is 930.

“Waverly-Shell Rock is a good school, but it’s a numbers issue, and it’s no more complicated than that.”

Crestwood, Waukon and New Hampton are targets of an expansion bid by the Upper Iowa Conference.

All of the superintendents will take the newest resolution back to their respective school boards. If passed, Waverly-Shell Rock will be subtracted from the league at the end of the 2022-23 school year.

WSR had the lone dissenting vote of the six superintendents.

“We get it. It makes sense,” said Greg Bodensteiner, athletics director at Waverly-Shell Rock.

“The only options (for NEIC expansion) are smaller schools, and we’re kind of an insurmountable hurdle in the way of that.

“We didn’t help ourselves with (the 2020) incident (in which a Charles City baseball player was the target of racial jeers from fans during a game with WSR), and we’re trying to get better in that regard.”

The NEIC has been in existence since 1920, and through most of its life, it has been a pillar of stability.

The league had operated as an affiliation of the same seven schools from 1968 (when Waukon joined) until 2021 (when Oelwein left for the North Iowa Cedar League).

Of course, the NEIC cannot simply send WSR on its way and continue with five members.

“We would be looking (to expand) with schools that are similar to us in size that don’t require a great deal of travel,” Lane said.

Potential candidates for expansion could include a return by Oelwein (BEDS 266), as well as North Fayette Valley (249), Osage (226) and Sumner-Fredericksburg (202).

And, what would be next for Waverly-Shell Rock?

“I really don’t know,” Bodensteiner said. “We would have a couple of options, but we don’t have a direction right now.”

The Mississippi Valley Conference will be down to 15 schools at the end of the present school year, and the potential arrival of WSR would neutralize the departure of Waterloo East.

The Iowa Alliance Conference begins operation in 2022-23 with 11 schools, and WSR would provide an even number in the north half, joining Waterloo East, Mason City, Fort Dodge, Marshalltown and Ames.

Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com