The WIAA Board of Control granted final approval Jan. 29 of a realignment plan that affects 76 schools and overhauls the Bay, Eastern Valley and Marinette & Oconto conferences for the 2015 season.
Oconto Falls High School, along with Denmark, Luxemburg-Casco and Marinette, will move from the Bay Conference to the Eastern Valley to join current members Clintonville, Fox Valley Lutheran, Freedom, Little Chute and Waupaca, which will play football in the Bay. Wrightstown will move from the Olympian Conference to the Eastern Valley.
The new-look Bay Conference will include current members Shawano, New London, Seymour and West De Pere and add Appleton Xavier from the Eastern Valley, Menasha from the Fox Valley Association, and Green Bay East and Green Bay West from the Fox River Classic Conference.
The M&O will remain largely unchanged, but will welcome Oneida Nation High School, a move that conference officials objected to earlier in the process.
“We’re happy with the grouping,” Oconto Falls athletic director Jerry Moynihan said. “We were real happy to stick with Marinette, Luxemburg-Casco and Denmark from the current Bay. We fit in well with those three schools.”
Moynihan noted Oconto Falls plays a lot of nonconference games against Clintonville and has had big postseason match-ups with some of the other Eastern Valley schools.
“In volleyball, we kind of have a little rivalry already with Fox Valley Lutheran,” Moynihan said. “They’ve come to our tournament the last two years and beat us, but then we got them in WIAA tournament play. With a few of the sports we already have started some of those rivalries.”
Mike Kaczmarek, Gillett athletic director, said the M&O isn’t perfect, but the conference will make the best of the changes.
“The M&O is a very close-knit conference,” Kaczmarek said. “It’s just going to take some time to get used to.”
M&O officials objected to Oneida being put in the conference at a WIAA board meeting Dec. 6.
“(Oneida Nation) only offers four sports, compared to how many sports most M&O schools have,” Kaczmarek said. “It’s going to take some work as far our commissioner making that schedule. We also offer a lot of extra-curricular activities that Oneida doesn’t offer. … Hopefully Oneida can introduce some of those things.”
Some schools, such as Xavier, objected to the realignment, but the board had to approve or reject the whole plan, which passed on a 10-1 vote.
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