Upstate Eight turns up the juice
Geneva, Batavia, Metea Valley join new two-division conference
Change is nothing new for the Upstate Eight Conference.
Through the league's 46-year history teams have come and gone, at times rendering the conference name obsolete.
(Heather Eidson/Staff Photographer)
DIVISION A Neuqua Valley (4,432)
Waubonsie Valley (3,276)
East Aurora (2,925)
Lake Park (2,839)
Bartlett (2,785)
Metea Valley (2,500)*
South Elgin (2,447)
DIVISION B Streamwood (2,386)
Elgin (2,294)
Larkin (2,255)
St. Charles East (2,165)
St. Charles North (2,155)
Geneva (1,978)
Batavia (1,877)
*Metea Valley opens this fall with only freshmen and sophomores. The school's first year with varsity sports will be 2010-11, but reports have indicated the girls swimming team will compete on the varsity level this fall.
NOTE: The conference will announce division names in the near future.
But the changes that will be put in place at the start of the 2010-11 school year represent the biggest shake-up the league has seen since its inception and will perhaps usher in an era of stability.
Two months ago the UEC announced that Batavia and Geneva will join the conference at the start of the 2010-11 school year. Metea Valley in Aurora will also begin competing in varsity sports in 2010, giving the UEC a total of 14 member schools.
Plans are in place to split the conference into two divisions based on enrollment. Those plans and the acceptance of Batavia and Geneva into the UEC will likely be finalized in early September when the principals of the league's schools gather for their regularly scheduled meeting.
While the conference's catchy name will likely stay the same -- the Upstate 14 just doesn't have the same ring -- the league will have a much different look in the coming years. With that said, the coming changes are popular among administrators and coaches alike.
"I think the addition of Batavia and Geneva is a very good fit," Streamwood athletics director Steve Gertz said. "It really answered a lot of questions for a lot of people and it really created, I think, the best competition for all of us."
Batavia and Geneva's decision to join the UEC came after the Western Sun Conference began to unravel several months ago. With concerns about Batavia and Geneva's growing enrollments and competitive superiority, several smaller schools in the three-year-old league opted to leave and join a new conference.
Such a breakup could have eventually been in the cards for the UEC, which covers a large geographic area compared to other suburban conferences and has varying enrollments among its member schools. However, any concerns about the demise of the league can likely be put to rest thanks to the new alignment, which for the most part keeps natural rivalries in tact while theoretically leveling the playing field based on enrollment.
The new alignment is also expected to alleviate scheduling headaches. In 15 of the past 18 years there have been an uneven number of teams in the UEC. To illustrate the league's lack of stability, consider that the 2010 changes mark the seventh time schools have either joined or left the conference since Waubonsie Valley entered the league in 1991.
"We thought we had something set when DeKalb was (in the conference) and we were working on divisions years ago," South Elgin principal Melanie Meidel said. "Then DeKalb left and we were stuck again with uneven numbers.
"I think this will help with scheduling since it brings us to 14. I think it will really balance things out well and hopefully bring stability."
The seven schools with enrollments greater than 2,400 students -- Neuqua Valley, Waubonsie Valley, East Aurora, Bartlett, Lake Park, Metea Valley and South Elgin -- will form one division. The seven schools with enrollments smaller than 2,400 -- Streamwood, Elgin, Larkin, St. Charles East, St. Charles North, Geneva and Batavia -- will make up the other division.
While the division alignment isn't completely based on geography, it does maintain the conference's natural rivalries.
The addition of Batavia and Geneva should also help grow what is sure to be a spirited rivalry among the four schools located in the Tri-Cities. Both Batavia and Geneva figure to match up extremely well with St. Charles East and St. Charles North, adding more excitement for three communities already familiar with consistent success on the high school level.
"It's the way it should be with all the Tri-Cities teams playing each other," St. Charles North boys basketball coach Tom Poulin said. "It's going to make for a home and away with them that is exciting, good for the community and great for the kids. It's almost one of those situations where you wish it could happen sooner."
Poulin's North Stars will indeed play Batavia, Geneva and the rest of the teams in North's division twice during the basketball season. For now, it appears basketball teams will only play two crossover games against opponents from the opposite division during the season. Neither crossover game will count toward the conference record.
The number of crossover games a team plays and whether they count toward the UEC record will be determined on a sport-by-sport basis. For example, current plans call for baseball teams to play three times against division opponents and twice against crossover opponents, with all games counting toward the league record.
Football teams will play each of the six teams in their division once and have one crossover game per season that doesn't factor into the league record.
If a plan to rotate non-division opponents is put in place for football, non-division rivals such as South Elgin and Larkin would only play each other once every seven years on the gridiron. While that is one potential drawback, the new alignment is fine with Tom Meaney, coach of the defending UEC football-champion Bartlett Hawks.
"The nice thing about it is now we are going to have two conference champions in football," Meaney said. "We're going to be a quality conference and we're excited. It's going to be more competition because we're going to be playing against the biggest schools, but we're fine with that."
For all the logistical benefits provided by the addition of Batavia and Geneva, the two schools also give a boost to the overall stature of the league.
Geneva finished second in the Class 7A state football playoffs last year, fourth in Class 4A girls basketball and it owns back-to-back girls cross country state titles. Batavia took second in Class 6A football in 2006 and boasts a storied boys basketball program.
Success and tradition like that should fit in well in the UEC, which is already home to schools like Elgin and East Aurora, which rank among the oldest high school athletic programs in the state, and up-and-coming powerhouses like Neuqua and Bartlett.
"I think Geneva and Batavia make us a stronger conference across the board, and Metea Valley will be loaded too," Poulin said. "I think the conference got stronger competitively, I think the conference got more entertaining and I think it's better for the Upstate Eight to go the route that it's gone."
