WSC begins its breakup

The breakup of the 3-year-old Western Sun Conference officially began Tuesday when the Yorkville School Board voted to remove the district from the eight-team league.

At the meeting, Yorkville athletic director Seth Schoonover presented a new 12-team league that would include fellow WSC members Kaneland, DeKalb, Rochelle and Sycamore, along with Morris, a current member of the Southwest Prairie Conference.

They would form the East Division of the unnamed conference while the West Division would include six schools currently in the NCIC Reagan Division.

This new conference would take effect in the 2010-11 school year.

The Yorkville proposal stated "the schools listed above are all community-based with similar enrollment and programs, providing greater equality for our activities and athletic programs."

The break up of the WSC isn't completely official, as each of the four other schools in the conference have to have the break approved by their respective school boards.

Kaneland athletic director Leigh Jaffke is presenting her case to the school board on Monday with an official decision to be announced on May 26.

"When we formed the Western Sun, I was hoping I wasn't going to have do this in my tenure here again," Jaffke said. "But I've got to be in charge of doing what's best for my kids here and my community."

Geneva, Batavia and Glenbard South did not wish to break up the conference, but beginning with the 2010-11 school year will be in need of a new conference.

"We just remain committed to the Western Sun at this point," Batavia athletic director and head football coach Mike Gaspari said. "If that changes, then we're going to have to really scramble."

Gaspari said it could take the three remaining schools two years to get into a new league and had hoped if a move was made it would not take effect until the 2011-12 school year.

"As late as it is in this school year, to me it would only be fair to give us two years, which is stated in the (WSC) bylaws," Gaspari said. "The fact that we don't have a new league to go to tomorrow, we could take a year just exploring that process and another year to put it together. So I think in fairness to the three of us...had this happened back in January, it might be different."

Kaneland principal Tony Valente confirmed that the change would take place for the 2010-11 school year.

"They need to do what they need to do and I'm fine with that as a coach," Geneva football coach Rob Wicinski said. "I just hope they give us time to get our act together on our end, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen so we've got to move fast."