Interstate 8 not interested in expansion

Three member schools of the NCIC Lincoln got a little bit of bad news Wednesday — the Interstate 8 heard you knocking, but you can’t come in.

Representatives of the 12 member Interstate 8 conference discussed the possibility of expansion at their conference meeting Wednesday, after receiving letters of interest in joining the conference from current NCIC Lincoln schools Hall, Mendota and Princeton.

Their message to the three schools — thanks, but no thanks.

“We had three schools apply to enter the I-8 conference and we talked about expansion, more not so much about any particular school, but just about did we want to expand or not,” said conference president Doug Evans of Seneca. “It was the overall feeling of everybody there that we just didn’t want to open the door to expansion.”

Hall athletic director Gary Barrera said while the schools did express interest in joining forces with the I-8, the NCIC Lincoln’s top priority is to bring another school into the conference, which was left with only five members after the departure of Rock Falls to the Big Northern.

“Still, the main option is that we are still the NCIC,” Barrera said. “The NCIC is still strong. Yes, we’ve lost some teams, and obviously, with football we have to fill the void of Rock Falls leaving.

“Where we are at right now is that we’re still part of the NCIC, we’re still a strong conference. The schools still involved in it still want the NCIC to be successful, even if we are small.”

Barrera said the NCIC would soon be holding a meeting looking into getting other teams to join the league.

“The problem that we have is that there’s a lot of teams already locked into conferences,” Barrera said. “So we might have to wait, we might have to go through a waiting period where we might just be a conference of four in football and five in all the other sports.”

As reported previously in the BCR, Princeton and Hall also expressed interest in the Three Rivers Conference, which is not interested in expansion at this time, especially with schools of Princeton or Mendota’s size.