Conference Membership

July 08, 2025

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Parents and Community Members,

Many of you are probably aware of the conversations happening in southwest Iowa related to activity conference memberships for school districts.  Just like the conversations and actions in recent years in college activities, a similar type of situation is occurring in our local conferences.  While discussions often pop up as schools grow or decrease in enrollment and participation numbers, in most of those situations they are just that, conversations.  That being said, yesterday we received an official invitation to join the Hawkeye 10 Activities Conference for as early as the 2027-2028 school year.

Recently, conferences like the Western Iowa Conference, Rolling Valley, Hawkeye 10, and Missouri River Conference have all either taken action or have been involved in creditable conversations with schools that could lead to changes in school memberships.  This includes us receiving an invitation to join the Hawkeye 10 conference yesterday.  Since there is much overlap in schools being invited to join new conferences, and work to encourage schools to remain in their current conferences, there is a lot to consider.  Some of the considerations for our coaches, sponsors, and ultimately our school board are things like: school enrollment trends and history; participation levels beyond varsity (jv, reserve, 9th, and middle school); activity offerings; district stability; school activity classification; geographic location; competitive history of activities; facility availability; and much more.  

Take our WIC conference for example.  After receiving an invitation to join the Rolling Valley Conference, the Audubon school board voted to join their conference for the 27-28 school year.  Additionally, IKM-Manning also received an invitation to join the Rolling Valley Conference and their school board voted to join that conference in the 26-27 school year.  Our WIC conference knew that this might be a possibility and we also sent invitations to schools encouraging them to apply for membership in our conference.  Two Hawkeye 10 schools, Red Oak and Shenendoah, are in that group of schools that were invited and are in discussions about that possibility.  The Hawkeye 10 is also looking to expand their conference membership and investigate small school and big school divisions while still maintaining a conference championship. Lastly, the MRC conference is also looking to expand and may invite some of the larger Hawkeye 10 schools to join their conference to form a north and south division.

Because of our invitation to join the Hawkeye 10 conference and our current membership in the WIC, we will be talking with and surveying our coaches and sponsors to help weigh the pros and cons of our conference membership options.  This information will be shared with our school board and based upon this input, and consideration of the factors previously mentioned, they will determine what conference is the best fit for our school district.  There is much to consider in such a decision, not only in the next couple of years, but trying to anticipate the best fit for 10 years or more from now to ensure that our activities programs and our student activity participants have the best opportunities to participate, compete, and improve in the activities that they are involved in during their time at Treynor CSD.

As always, thank you for your support and Roll Cards!