Amid the preparation for the Normal Community Regional Softball game between Normal West and NCHS last Saturday, I had a chance to talk to Stan Lewis, Normal West’s Athletic Director and just casually ask him a few questions pertaining to sports both in- and out-of-season at the moment.
“We see each other a lot,” Lewis said of the chances the two local Unit 5 schools get to face off come playoff time. Had NCHS not lost to Moline in baseball last week, last Saturday’s activities at both Normal Community High and Illinois Wesleyan University would have stretched some families’ capabilities to catch both teams – and therefore, any offspring participating – in action.
Lewis said the familiarity with which the two sides play in the post-season is not getting old, at least from the perspective of the kids and their coaches. “It’s a big rivalry and it has always been really good in terms of competitive games.”
Lewis theorizes that “I think if you ask any coaches, they would prefer to do things with Regionals and Sectionals with teams north of Interstate 80.” Interstate 80 runs from the Quad Cities east to south of Chicago. It is a primary east–west route for traffic coming and going through the state. It is also a dividing line used by the Illinois High School Association to determine which teams will meet in Regional and Sectional competitions.
As Lewis explains it, if you were a high school team north of I-80, IHSA uses a ‘sectional complex of 16 or 18 or 20 teams so that if you did have a real good season, you would not see a rival, necessarily, at the Regional level. You wouldn’t see each other until the Sectional level.”
“With the 16 schools that are in Class 4A south of I-80, IHSA sets up playoffs by geographic areas,” explained Andy Turner, athletic director at NCHS. “Those schools south of I-80 get set up geographic areas. Those geographic areas are then put into groups of four. Potentially, what you have are Regionals that are loaded.” Turner said that is exactly what fans are witnessing in their IHSA high school baseball brackets this year.
In one Regional, fans were getting to see Rock Island, Moline, East Moline, and both Unit 5 high schools. “That’s a tough Regional right there,” Turner said with a chuckle. “Potentially, four of those teams could play in a Sectional game.”
Every other high school south of that I-80 dividing line is in “true Regionals,” Lewis said. Having the Unit 5 rivalry currently in place at playoff time as it is, Lewis said, “is great for the fans. I think, from a coaching standpoint, when you have two very strong teams, it would be nice to see them in separate Regionals.” He said being able to meet NCHS at a Sectional would be nice. But for now, IHSA has things in place the way they are and there is not much chance of a change coming soon.
I then tapped Lewis and Turner about a potential increase in the number of schools joining the Big 12 Conference (Hold it…wait a minute…I mean the Big 9, at least until the end of the 2013-14 school year). The Big 12 is that in name only, having lost schools in the past, most recently Mattoon, when the Green Wave left the conference after the 2011-12 school year to join the closer to home and smaller Apollo Conference. And after the coming 2013-14 school year, Big 12 will shrink again when Decatur’s two high schools – MacArthur High, known as the Generals, and Decatur Eisenhower, known as the Panthers – bolt for the Central State Eight Conference.
After both Decatur schools exit, that will leave the Big 12 with a dwindling seven – Normal’s two high schools, Bloomington High School, Danville, Urbana, and Champaign’s two high schools, Central and Centennial. Lewis said in terms of school populations, Normal’s two are the largest, with a combined population of 3,445, while Urbana is, at roughly 1,000 kids, the smallest.
Lewis explained that approving a new school to join a conference starts with schools wanting to change conferences usually approaching the conference they want to join. Sometimes, he said, athletic directors get wind of another school wanting to change conferences and receive inquiries from schools wanting to join a conference. He said those inquiries are sent up a chain of command to a school principal. School principals serve on a committee that approves a new school’s membership into a conference.
“We’re open for suggestions,” Turner added about potential new members for the Big 12. “If anybody has any ideas, we’ll listen. We’re looking for input from anybody for different ideas because, the situation that we’re in right now is not a shock to any of the seven schools that are still remaining in the Big 12.”
Being that short on teams will be a major issue on football scheduling when it’s all over with,” Turner said.
For years, there have been rumblings that because Unit 5 is growing so fast that a third high school may be in the community’s future. In fact, Lewis told me ADs of a few of the Big 12 schools have asked him, “’So, how soon before you get that third high school?’”
Lewis said those other ADs aren’t kidding. But if other schools aren’t found to round out – or maybe I should say round upward — the number of schools in the Big 12, scheduling football opponents “is going to be a major issue before it’s all over with,” according to Turner.
The major issue has already started to show itself, if you have seen the football schedules of the three teams Normal has, including Illinois State University’s Lab School, University High. In addition to taking on standard conference opponents, NCHS will host Niles Notre Dame at Ironmen Field on Week 3 (Sept. 13); Normal West will travel to Columbia, Mo. in week 8 of the season (Oct. 19) to play Betal High School; and U-High will travel to Cahokia for their week 9 game (Oct. 26).
On another subject, I covered the NCHS Regional Softball game between the Ironmen and Wildcats last Saturday. While fans are waiting to get in and players are warming up, the teams request certain CDs to be played over the loudspeaker to get their adrenaline going. While that doesn’t normally phase me, I just found that going from listening to country to metal to country to some other form of music back-to-back-to-back this time to be jarring.
Speaking as a one-time former radio announcer, I found it hard to believe the sudden change got to me this time. Usually, I don’t even notice it because I am so busy preparing for the contest I’m covering that I mentally turn the volume down and don’t notice. This time, the sudden change in music formats from one song to the next was very noticeable.