Just over two decades since joining the Mississippi Valley Conference, the Aquinas High School football team could be making a switch.
More discussions were held by the WIAA this week about realigning seven conferences and creating six new ones for 2019.
“We’ve been asking the WIAA for a release in our conference just based on our school population for quite a bit of time,” Aquinas football coach Tom Lee said. “We support any of the proposals we’ve seen so far.”
One proposal puts the Blugolds, with their 289 enrollment — easily the smallest in the MVC — in a conference where, aside from Onalaska Luther, the shortest road game would be 79 miles away.
Lee says it’s worth it to create competitive balance.
“I’ve been around long enough where we used to go all the way to Wausau Newman to play games,” Lee said. “It’d be nice if everybody was closer but that’s probably just the cost of doing business.”
Things haven’t been all bad for the Blugolds in the MVC.
Aquinas joined the conference in 1997. The football team immediately won conference that season. It’s one the MVC twice since (2000, 2008), and won a Division 5 state championship in 2007.
Since 2008, however, the Blugolds have never finished above .500 in the MVC and have gone 0-14 the past two seasons (1-17 overall).
Lee points to those struggles in recent years, at least partially, due to significantly smaller class sizes than their MVC opponents. In the new conference, Aquinas would be largest school.
“Football’s a numbers game,” Lee said. “If a kid goes down that’s a starter, that’s a senior, and we have to put a sophomore in against some of the schools that we have to play in our league, that’s tough.”
“We’ll be playing, if this goes through, schools that are in a similar situation as us.”