GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Changes are likely coming to the high school athletics landscape in the coming years, and those changes began to take shape on Monday night. Allendale, Cedar Springs, Kenowa Hills, and Lowell's school boards all voted unanimously to request to withdraw from the OK Conference at the end of this school year.
The four schools want to create a new conference with Coopersville, Greenville and Sparta that would be called the River Cities Alliance.
Each school has its own reasons for wanting to leave the conference, but there were some common themes. The superintendents argue that the new conference will provide stability, and give each school a chance to create long-term rivalries as opposed to the OK Conference which reconfigures its divisions every four years.
"One of the things that we would love to try and accomplish is to establish a greater degree of regularity of opponents and to be more efficient with two resources, time and money, by competing against districts in closer proximity to Cedar Springs Public Schools," said Cedar Springs Superintendent Scott Smith, who estimates the move will reduce the number of miles the Red Hawks travel by 37 percent.
The new conference, which intentionally uses the word "Alliance" in its name, would also allow member schools to create relationships with other member schools that extend beyond athletics.
"This is a tremendous opportunity for us to create things like an all-league band, an all-league choir, to have internal competitions for robotics, or for Science Olympiad. There's just a lot of really neat opportunities here that being in a smaller conference will give us an opportunity to benefit all of our students, not just athletics," said Allendale Superintendent Dr. Garth Cooper.
According to OK Conference bylaws, schools are supposed to give a few years notice before leaving, but they can also request permission to withdraw on shorter notice than that. All four school districts that made that decision early Monday night made it clear they want their split from the OK Conference to be amicable.
"We appreciated the time we were in the OK Conference, but we're looking for a better opportunity for our students. We're hoping that the OK Conference schools will see it that way, and so that's why I'm asking us to send this resolution to them," Cooper said at Allendale's meeting.
13 ON YOUR SIDE reached out to administrators from the other three school districts on Monday and has not heard back yet.
Sparta's school board also met, but the conference issue was not on their agenda. Coopersville and Greenville's school boards meet on October 16.
13 ON YOUR SIDE also reached out to the OK Conference on Monday. Commissioner David Feenstra says the conference has not received official word from any of the schools involved that they wish to withdraw. The OK Conference's executive council is meeting on October 24th.
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