Decorah…All They Want For Christmas Is A ‘New Athletic Conference’…Beware The ‘Grinch’

(12-22-24) As the end of 2024 is upon us…Decorah is still hoping to find a suitable high school athletic conference to compete in after the school year ends. It would be the best Christmas present they could receive.

High school athletic conferences come and go on a pretty regular basis, but conferences that have been around for over 100 years and have survived now will be an * asterisk in the record books.

The Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) has been around since 1920 and had been a seven-school conference for more than 50 years before Oelwein left in 2021 to join the North Iowa Cedar League. A year later, the NEIC voted the conference’s largest school, Waverly-Shell Rock, out of the lconference, this past school year they competed as an independent.

Another of the NEIC members Charles City to join the North Central Conference (NCC) beginning in the 2025-26 school year.

Three other member schools….Waukon, New Hampton and Crestwood… are all moving this coming fall to the Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) from the NEIC.

While Decorah has been turned down by UIC this past summer. A mediation process that was facilitated by the Iowa Department of Education, the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) and the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU) would later also decline Decorah’s request to join the UIC. Stating that Decorah enrollment is to big to compete in the conference.

The demise of the NEIC is one of the saddest situations of a conference imploding.

Another option that was being considered…but common sense would tell you that sending student-athletes on a two-hour road trip to compete during the school week…is CRAZY.

With football not being a part of any Iowa conference affiliation,due to Iowa having districts, it takes away a sport that size of the enrollment could be an issue.

Iowa law states that every school district is entitled to belong to an athletic conference. It has to be disappointing time for the Decorah school administration, student-athletes, coaches and families of how this is not moving forward. Yet the state of Iowa seems to have wiped the problem off their slates. Why even have a law when there seems to be no viable solution offered?

You now have two NEIC schools without a conference home and looking at being an independent for a long time.

Going to court for those schools could be an option, since there is a law that favors both schools, but that could be very costly for the two districts.

The Iowa Department of Education and the two state associations should be getting a failing grade on how they have handled this. Have they done follow-up? Maybe it is time for the state legislature to step in to guide this process. Getting elected officials involved in this situation will perk up the two state associations.

Member schools of the UIC during this Christmas season are the GRINCHES, several who are former members of the NEIC, leave their long-time fellow conference member out in the cold, but it sure doesn’t seem like they care about what the two schools future athletic programs will have to endure.