It’s Official – Sterling to Join New Conference

After nearly 80 years as a member of the North Central Illinois Conference (NCIC), Sterling High School will have a new conference home beginning in the 2010-2011 school year – the Northern Illinois Big 12. After over two-months of discussion and speculation, the new league was officially announced during a media conference at LaSalle-Peru High School Monday.

The new 12-team league will be comprised of the 6-current members of the NCIC-Reagan (Sterling, Dixon, Geneseo, Ottawa, LaSalle-Peru, Streator), Morris (who joins the NCIC-Reagan for 2009-2010) and five current members of the Western Sun Conference (Rochelle, DeKalb, Sycamore, Yorkville, Maple Park-Kaneland).

“While its sad to see out long-standing membership with the NCIC end, we feel the new conference is a great fit for us across the board,” said SHS Activities Director Nathan Delany. “We are 12 similar schools, from similar communities that offer similar programs. It’s a great fit.”

For team sports like football, basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball, the conference will split into two, six-team divisions. Sterling and the other current NCIC-Reagan schools will compete in the western division. Morris and the current Western Sun schools will comprise the east. Round-robin schedules will be utilized for divisional play, with guaranteed crossover games against teams from the other division.

For individual sports like cross country, tennis, swimming, wrestling, bowling and track and field, one, all-school conference championship meet will be held at the end of each season after a series of meets are staged during the regular season.

The competition between member schools will commence with the 2010-2011 school year. In addition to athletics, the league will also offer events in music, scholastic bowl and drama.

Daily Gazette Article