Anticipation - by Bill Kaye

Anticipation... There’s nothing like looking forward to things and what’s better than seeing the fall sports season closing in. Summertime and baseball is great, but the juices get flowing when football is right around the corner. It’s always fun to check out what the IHSAA has done with our local schools’ alignments.

Let’s start with the big schools and move on down. 4A Kankakee Valley will open a new football facility this year which should stoke interest for the Kougars. Sixty three teams in are in 4A with KV ranking 37th with an enrollment of 1041. The four classes are spread quite evenly including 244 seniors. They will compete in Sectional 18 along with Culver Academy, Logansport, New Prairie, Plymouth and Clay, Riley and St. Joseph from South Bend.

Rensselaer Central and North Newton both compete in 64-team 2A which includes Pioneer (by far with the smallest enrollment of 288; the next bigger school has nearly 100 more students - that’s what success will get you). Rensselaer is the 18th largest school in the class with 498 students, 121 listed as seniors. North Newton is the 55th largest school with 393 students, including 104 seniors. Both schools are in Sectional 33, which also includes Andrean, Boone Grove, Bowman Academy, Bishop Noll Institute, Wheeler and Whiting. Andrean slides back to 2A this year after spending time in 3A due to the success factor while Noll is one year removed from moth-balling their varsity program due to lack of numbers. They’ll play a mixed varsity/junior varsity slate this year so their inclusion in Sect. 33 is problematic. Gotta love those byes, somebody probably is going to get one.

That brings us to the 1A schools in our area which include West Central (262 students with 78 seniors) 44th largest in 1A, South Newton (225 students with 53 seniors) 56 largest 1A program and Tri-County (210 students with 51 seniors) 60th largest 1A (only four schools listed smaller in the state). 1A lists 64 schools competing. South Newton and West Central are both in Sectional 41 along with Culver Community, Gary Roosevelt, Lake Station, South Central, North Judson and Winamac. Tri-County participates in Sectional 42 with Carroll, Clinton Central, Clinton Prairie, Frontier, Lafayette Central Catholic, North White and Traders Point Academy.

First week of sectionals is Oct. 25th. Good Luck to all our area teams throughout the season!

*All enrollment numbers are as reported by IHSAA.org