Things are changing with the Mid County Sports Co-op next year.
At the April ROWVA school board meeting, the board voted unanimously to rescind the coop with the Galva school district for football, cross country, and golf.
The Galva School District released a statement indicating that District 224 was blindsided by the news just a few days ahead of the ROWVA board’s actions, on April 14.
In a statement regarding the revocation of the agreement, “Galva believed it had Board Agreements in place with Williamsfield and ROWVA for the next two years, with individual Fall [sports] contracts yet to be signed, and submitted to the Illinois High School Association.”
The statement simply put that the ROWVA school district was unhappy that the Galva district hadn’t joined the co-op for year-round sports. “ROWVA stated that the reasoning behind the revocation was that Galva refused to join all sports in a year-round Mid-County Sports Cooperative, and ROWVA was deeply insulted by the lack of expanded participation.”
According to the statement, Galva was presented with an invitation to expand the cooperative agreement to all sports. ROWVA’s BOE was expecting approval of the expansion by January. However, the Galva Board states they felt that one month was not enough time to consider the Co-op expansion. Instead, District 224 requested the current Fall co-op to continue while any expansion was studied.
Galva alleges that because of the district’s inaction on expanding the co-op, the ROWVA district presented a new football contract which drastically shifted team activities from Galva to Oneida. In February, the Galva Board approved extending the football cooperative but only on the pretense that there would be equity between Galva and Oneida with football activities: practices and games. Athletic Directors were said to have begun working on details of the extension, as school boards from all three districts (ROWVA, Galva, Williamsfield) had to approve the contract.
At this time, the Galva school district has no football games scheduled for the Fall of 2021 because ROWVA holds the Lincoln Trail Conference slot for the co-op. There are limited options for the district, including switching to 8-man football under the Galva Wildcats name or another cooperative venture with a neighboring team that is in the LTC.
ROWVA administrators disagree with the context of Galva’s statement.
More to come as this is a developing story.