The days of interstate travel and other scheduling complications for football teams in the SouthWest Suburban and DuPage Valley conferences appear to be over.
DVC athletic directors announced Tuesday that the league, which formed in 1975, is planning to merge with the SWSC beginning next season.
The arrangement, which is for football only, creates a 15-team conference consisting of three five-team divisions.
“Those divisions were created based on 50% enrollment and 50% success factor over the past two years,” Naperville North athletic director Bob Quinn said. “The top division will cross over twice with the middle and once with the bottom. Seven teams will get a bye because of the odd number of schools.”
The largest division will consist of Naperville North, Neuqua Valley, Lincoln-Way East, Lockport and Homewood-Flossmoor. The middle division will have Naperville Central, Metea Valley, Sandburg, Lincoln-Way West and Andrew. Waubonsie Valley, DeKalb, Stagg, Lincoln-Way Central and Bradley-Bourbonnais are in the smallest division.
The seeds of the merger were planted three years ago when the respective conferences agreed to play a nonconference game in Week 3 of this season.
“That kind of forged a relationship with them,” Quinn said. “Then they came to us and said, ‘Hey, we need help.’ We said, ‘We need help. Let’s figure this out.’ So we did.”
Teams from both conferences have struggled to fill their nonconference slates. That was particularly true for the six-team DVC.
“It relieves the biggest frustration year in and year out, which is scheduling, so that’s a good thing,” Naperville Central coach Mike Ulreich said. “Hopefully, it will be a lot easier to fill out a schedule. Seven of the nine games are filled, which is great.”
While average travel will increase for DVC teams, it won’t be a major burden, according to Quinn.
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“It fixes the out-of-state travel,” Quinn said. “It’s better than going to Michigan or Ohio or Missouri or Kentucky, which are all states we’ve played in over the past five to six years.”
The alignment of the new conference, which does not yet have an official name, is for the 2024 season only. The makeup of the divisions will be reevaluated every year or two based on enrollment and success factor.
For now, the DVC will remain intact for all other sports.
“At some levels, we’d certainly like to provide a more robust offering for other sports,” Quinn said. “But at this point we’re going to do football, and we’ll see how things go.”
Matt Le Cren is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.