Red Oak ponders WIC move

The Red Oak School Board is pondering an invitation to move into a different conference.
Superintendent Ron Lorenz said on June 11, he Red Oak School District received an official invitation to join the Western Iowa Conference beginning in the 2027-2028 school year. The WIC is seeking to expand, and they have extended similar invitations to nine other school districts, including Shenandoah, several districts in Central Iowa and a couple of districts in Northern Iowa. They asked that these districts respond by August 1 as to their interest or desire to explore this further.
In response to that invitation, the Hawkeye 10 has committed to restructuring in order to address the disparities that exist within the conference.
“I want to emphasize that the Hawkeye 10 superintendents have acknowledged the current disparities, the competitive imbalance in the conference, and they’re mobilizing to retain Red Oak and Shenandoah. This is an issue that we have been talking about with other league schools for several years, at least since I’ve been here. To this point, those protests and concerns have fallen on deaf ears. Now, people are motivated because our problem has become their problem. When we start seriously entertaining different alternatives, now we have other districts that are saying, wait a minute, that will have an impact on me or on us,” advised Lorenz. “As a result, the Hawkeye 10 superintendents have tentatively proposed inviting two to three additional teams to join the Hawkeye 10, expanding the league, and allowing for the creation of two divisions based on enrollment. Generally, what we have talked about is teams within each division would play each other twice per year, and would have the option then of playing teams in the other division.”
Lorenz explained that there have been a lot of ideas, and the idea shared above has not been fully-formed, and there have been other ideas thrown out there, such as the potential of playing to a true champion in certain sports. As an example, the winner of the small school division would play the winner of the large school division to determine a true champion in a given sport. Lorenz said the ideas are being fast-tracked based on the timelines that have been given by the WIC. Lorenz outlined some of the data he was considering to determine the best path forward for the district.
• Tradition: Red Oak, Shenandoah, Atlantic, Creston, Clarinda, and Villisca were founding members of the Hawkeye 10 in 1930. However, all the member districts have undergone very significant demographic shifts and experienced some very different enrollment trends, with some growing rapidly while others have shrunk, so Red Oak is one of the founding districts competing against districts that have grown significantly.
“ I think it’s important for us to remember that our league membership does not dictate our rivalries. Regardless of the league that we belong to, we do have latitude to select teams that we want to play. We’re not bound to only play league schools. If we were to leave our current conference, or if our conference were to restructure, we still have the flexibility to engage in those rivalry games, and I know that’s something that Mark Erickson does every year. So I don’t know that tradition is destroyed if we make a change,” explained Lorenz. “We are towards the bottom of the list in terms of size relative to other Hawkeye 10 districts, but if we were to move to the WIC, Red Oak and Shenandoah would move to the top of the list. In the Hawkeye 10, we are 40% smaller than the league average, just counting kids in our school. What that means is we have less than half the students and proportionally fewer resources compared to many of our competitors.”
 • Competetive imbalance: Lewis Central has had 34 titles in the last five years. Glenwood has 24 titles, and Denison-Schleswig, six. Red Oak and Shenandoah, the two smallest public schools in the Hawkeye 10, have combined for just two league titles in the last five years, and both of those were the Red Oak volleyball team in 2019 and 2020, which Lorenz felt reflected a consistent competitive imbalance.
Lorenz said he had examined proximity, as the district doesn’t want to be in a situation where it is expanding trips and being in a situation where kids are spending more time on buses and missing more school.
“I have tried to calculate the miles from Red Oak to each of these communities. As an example, I just said Red Oak to Denison. So again, this is not necessarily scientific. But the numbers are taken from Google Maps. What you see is that our current average travel time or travel miles is 48.8 in the Hawkeye 10. If we were to join the WIC, our average would be 50.5. Which is negligible, it’s two miles. The longest trip we take in the Hawkeye 10 is 91.7 miles. The longest we would take in the WIC would be 75.3 miles. If IKM Manning leaves the WIC, which they are expected to do, that average will go down,” stated Lorenz.
Lorenz said Red Oak has had ongoing conversations with Shenandoah. Because of their unique situation within the Hawkeye 10 and the fact that they’ve both been invited, they have hitched their wagons to one another.
“We have said to both the WIC and to the Hawkeye 10, this is a package deal. You take both of us or you get none of us, so there’s not going to be any carving this person out of this district to get the other one. We’re in this together, which is why we released a joint statement saying we’re together in this completely. Nate Perrien and I went down to Shenandoah and met with their administrative team to make sure that we are absolutely on the same page, and I’m confident that we are,” said Lorenz.
Bowling and tennis are two activities that are not offered in the WIC. However, Lorenz said if Red Oak were to leave the Hawkeye 10, the people that they compete against are still going to want to compete, the only thing the district will lose is a conference tournament. If Red Oak was to leave the Hawkeye 10, there would be fewer offerings, but the district would probably figure out a way to have bowling and tennis. Tennis in particular is a relatively inexpensive sport.
Lorenz shared the results of a survey that was sent out that asked students if they were in favor of moving from the Hawkeye 10 to the WIC. A total of 72.7% of students were in favor. Ironically, Lorenz said it was the same percentage of coaches that were in favor.
“We asked every head coach, are you in favor, are you not? And what happened was we had most of them say, yes, I am in favor. A few of them said, no, I am not in favor. Some said, I’m ambivalent. I don’t feel strongly either way. I am neither in favor nor opposed. Rather than skew the percentage, I took the number of yes votes, no votes, and divided, that’s what the percentage is based on. The four head coaches that abstained, they are not calculated in that percentage. Nevertheless, 72.7% of our coaches are in favor of Red Oak moving from the Hawkeye 10. Also, this poll was taken after the Hawkeye 10 said they would consider restructuring,” Lorenz commented.  “I’m going to say at this point, this re-structuring of the Hawkeye 10 I think is a bit of a long shot. A lot of things have to come together. Some of them are districts being invited into the conference that I don’t know if they have a real reason to join. And the frustrating thing to me on this is that this is something that we’ve been communicating to them for many years now.”
The superintendent and the principals who represent the Board of Control in the Hawkeye 10 and the athletic directors had a recent meeting to discuss the proposal and have a vote on inviting three districts to the Hawkeye 10, with an Aug. 1 deadline to make a decision.
Lorenz also said that Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 786, which creates a state committee to oversee conference realignment. Effective July 1, this committee, comprised of nine superintendents and nine athletic directors that are appointed by the Girls’ Union and the Boys’ Association, are going to rule, review, and approve schools’ requests to change conference membership.
“If they get crazy requests, they can deny them. The committee has said they’re going to evaluate requests based on factors such as school enrollment and overall benefit of student-athletes. The question is, if the WIC invites multiple school districts and then say they’re only going to pick a couple of them, the first thing that I’m going to be doing is contacting this committee and saying, we have received a formal invitation, and now the rug was pulled out from underneath us, if that’s what the board wants me to do, so we have some recourse. The other reason that I throw this out there is I think some of this reaction may very well be the WIC trying to get ahead of this. They want to pick who comes to their conference rather than be told by people at Des Moines who comes to their conference,” Lorenz advised. “The other piece that I think is relevant, is that these dominoes are starting to fall. When Audubon left the WIC, that was the first domino Regardless, if we’re not interested in going to WIC, but we are interested in restructuring the Hawkeye 10, if we invite three districts to the Hawkeye 10, that’s going to create a void in those other conferences who are going to start recruiting others. So there’s going to be a series of this that’s gonna start happening. And I think for us, it’s good that we’re on the front end.”
Lorenz also said that HF 786 was a wildly popular bill, and there was very little dissent about things, and there was no discussion about the governor signing it.
“I think there’s a very real sentiment that maybe we don’t have the best decision-making going into some of these things, or maybe the decisions aren’t being made for the right reasons. So that’s where I think everybody is, and conference officials are probably scrambling a little bit trying to reconcile their current state with these requirements,” Lorenz commented.
Lorenz said the board has to consider there are potential options on the table, one of which is the invitation to the WIC, and the other being the potential for restructuring of the Hawkeye 10.
“We need some direction in terms of next steps. I think we need to engage our community. I think just knowing kind of where your minds are relative to these two possibilities, and also what your expectations are relative to going out and making sure that everybody has a voice will be helpful. Honestly, I think with the students being very much in favor, and coaches being much in favor of going to the WIC, I think we honestly have to look at that, and I’d be very much in favor of taking that into strong consideration.”
Board member Scott Bruce felt that the Hawkeye 10 needed to be restructured, but he wasn’t sure if it was possible and he needed to see a clearer path to what that restructure would look like. He also felt that the competition in the WIC would be tough, such as teams in Treynor and Underwood.
Board member Ricky Rohrig was split on a decision, but felt both ideas were entertaining ones. He hoped that the decision to leave the Hawkeye 10 was to be dominant or because it was just settling because it couldn’t compete against the stronger teams in the Hawkeye 10, and asked why the invitation was coming. 
Lorenz said everything was happening due to Red Oak having a fortuitous invitation which has become everybody’s problem.
“Dare I say, we have leverage that we haven’t had before. So with respect to the invitation from the WIC, I believe that if that’s our only option and we don’t take advantage of it, it’s not coming again. So we better just resign ourselves to what we have and stop complaining about it. With respect to the proposal by the Hawkeye 10, let’s just be honest with ourselves. This would not have happened if we weren’t considering leaving. Because now you’ve got the Clarindas of the world and the Crestons of the world and other people are saying, what happens to us if they leave? So that’s the answer to why now. I know that Clarinda is going to advocate all day long, as loud as they can, to get this done, because they know if we leave, and if Shenandoah leaves, they’re in a very precarious situation,” Lorenz stated.
Board Member Bryce Johnson said Red Oak has not grown and has decreased in size. The district now has an opportunity in front of them to try to correct that. Red Oak has changed, and Johnson felt the board needs to really seriously consider what is best for the students and programs.
If it comes down to enrollment, Board member Kathy Walker felt they needed to see what the new Hawkeye 10 proposition is. She didn’t think they could make the proposal to go to the WIC without knowing what the other proposal is.
Ultimately, the board was in agreement that whatever decision was made, it would be the one that was the biggest benefit to the students.
No other discussion was held pending discussions with the Hawkeye 10 officials.