Switching sports conferences

CLINTONVILLE – The Clintonville Board of Education heard the pros and cons of the possibility of the Clintonville School District switching to a different conference for sports, as well as the challenges it would have to overcome to make such a move.
The topic was discussed in detail at the board’s March 31 board meeting.
“There’s been some frustration from parents that have gotten in contact with me about their daughters or their sons coming home and they’re just sick of just getting beat night and night and night again, and they don’t want to play athletics,” said Troy Kuhn, Clintonville superintendent.
Kuhn said he asked Shaun Liesch, the activities director for the Clintonville School District, what he thought about the district switching conferences for sports.
“We talked about it, because it’s not just always about winning and losing,” Kuhn said.

If the district would explore moving to a different conference, Kuhn said the “ideal option” would be to joining the CWC (Central Wisconsin Conference). This would mean the district would compete against Weyauwega-Fremont, Shiocton, Manawa, Amherst, Bonduel, and Wittenberg-Birnamwood.
One of the positives of such a move, would be less travel, Kuhn said.
Another positive would be Clintonville would be competing against students of the same demographics, such a poverty level and needs of the district.
Kuhn said a negative of such a move would be the fact that the CWC does not offer all the sports that Clintonville’s current conference offers. For example, CWC does not offer girls soccer.
“There would be a couple of other things that we’d really have to put our thinking caps on and say, ‘How would this work?,’” Kuhn said.
Kuhn said the coaches in the district were asked their opinion on switching conferences, and some coaches were adamant about not switching. They said they like the tough competition, and the athletes realize they are playing against “high-level” opponents.
“Even thought they lose, it makes their program better,” Kuhn said.
Other coaches said they struggle to get students to play sports because the students know that the team doesn’t have a chance to win a conference championship, Kuhn said.
If the district would want to pursue switching conferences, Kuhn said the district would need to communicate with the schools in its current conference. He added that now would be the perfect time to switch conferences, if that is the direction the district wants to go, because Fox Valley Lutheran just dropped out of the current conference, so now there is an odd number of schools in the conference.
Kuhn acknowledged that the CWC has expressed hesitation about Clintonville joining the conference because many years ago Clintonville was going to join the CWC, but backed out at the last minute.
“The CWC, they have not forgot that, especially many of the principals that were there at that time, and they’re still like, ‘You wanted to come last time and you pulled the plug on us and we worked over a year on that, so if you’re going to do it this time, we going to make you do X, Y and Z before we even consider bringing you here,’” Kuhn said.
Even though Clintonville would be the largest school in the CWC if it switched to that conference, Kuhn said it would not dominate because the current schools in that conference have solid sports programs.
“So, there’s a whole bunch of different opinions,” Kuhn said.
Liesch added that if Clintonville would join the CWC, it would want to be in the CWC-East. The CWC wants eight teams in the CWC-East, and there are currently eight teams there, so one team would need to be displaced.
“From what I gather, nobody wants to move,” Liesch said.
He added that any request from the district to switch to the CWC would have to go through the WIAA, and be approved by a conference realignment taskforce.
“Just because we would request for realignment doesn’t necessarily mean it would be given to us, even if we have support from one side or the other side,” Liesch said.
Liesch said based on feedback he has received, Clintonville does not have the support needed to switch to a different conference.