Rockets to launch out of NCIC
ROCK FALLS — Rock Falls High School has received a formal invitation from the Big Northern Conference to join its athletic league beginning in the 2011-12 school year.
Rock Falls, which sent a letter of interest to the league late last year, will take action on the invitation at its board meeting next Wednesday. The Rockets has been a member of the NCIC since 1942.
“I’m hoping it happens,” Rock Falls athletic director Rich Montgomery said. “We’re hoping to have everything taken care of by Tuesday, and hopefully we can take action at the board meeting.”
Rock Falls’ anticipated departure, on the heels of Kewanee’s exit for the Three Rivers next year, would leave the NCIC Lincoln with five members in 2011-12. There would be just four NCIC members in football as 2009-10 newcomer St. Bede is joining over for football.
Members of the NCIC Reagan, which came about with the creation of division play before the 2006-07 school year, will depart the NCIC in 2010-11 to form the new Northern Illinois Big 12 Conference.
“We may have doomed the NCIC when we went to divisions,” Montgomery said. “At the time it looked like the right thing to do, and I think we’ve seen that hasn’t been the case.”
Hall athletic director Gary Barrera said that the topic of Rock Falls’ possible exodus from the conference was discussed Wednesday at the regularly scheduled NCIC Lincoln conference meeting in Mendota. Barrera said league officials discussed plans for future expansion, but no official decisions were made.
“We’re still looking at expansion, talking back and forth,” Barrera said. “We’re trying to see what teams would be better suited for the NCIC, how we can approach them to get them in, stuff like that.”
As previously reported in the BCR, league president Guy Gradert of Prophetstown said the Three Rivers had received letters of interest from Hall and Princeton, but at this time the Three Rivers is not interested in future expansion.
Interstate Eight president Doug Evans of Seneca told the BCR the I-8 has received inquiries from NCIC Lincoln schools.
Montgomery said lessening Rock Falls’ scheduling burden in football would be the biggest advantage of joining the Big Northern. BNC teams are locked into seven games each year, five division games and two crossovers, leaving two nonconference dates to schedule. Next year in the NCIC, Rock Falls could be forced to find as many as five nonconference opponents.
“Unfortunately, football scheduling is the driving force behind every conference,” Montgomery said. “Trying to find that odd Week 8 football game, that’s tough. We really want to be in a situation where it’s not so tough to schedule football games.”
The Big Northern started searching for a new member after Hampshire informed the league it would leave for the Fox Valley Conference in 2011-12. Rock Falls and Marian Central Catholic in Woodstock were the two schools that responded to the BNC by its December deadline. Rock Falls was the only one to receive an invitation, according to conference president and North Boone athletic director Dale Purvis.
“Rock Falls fits in with the conference very well,” Purvis said, “as far as the school size and the success they’ve had in their programs.”
Purvis said the only issue some BNC schools had with Rock Falls was its distance from some of the schools in the BNC East Division, which includes Burlington Central, Harvard, Marengo, North Boone and Richmond-Burton.
The West Division, which Rock Falls would likely join, includes Byron, Genoa-Kingston, Oregon, Rockford Lutheran, Stillman Valley and Winnebago.
Purvis also said the Big Northern would like Rock Falls to add soccer, a sport that all current BNC schools offer.
