The North Suburban Conference will look to maintain its reputation in 2016-17 when the likes of Antioch, Grant, Lakes, North Chicago, Round Lake and Wauconda leave.

The Prairie Division schools, with the exception of Vernon Hills, will be moving out of the conference and joining with Grayslake Central and North in 2016-17. The NSC will be left with eight teams, down from 14 but still a very good number, according to LHS Athletic Director Mr. Briant Kelly, as will the newly formed conference.

According to Mr. Kelly, competitiveness and proximity were the two largest factors that pushed the schools out. For schools like Lakes, it made more sense to play against Grayslake, a team with which that they already have a fierce rivalry, than Libertyville, which is also a further drive.

“Their decision is based off of competitiveness within the conference,” said Mr. Kelly. “They felt like they were not competitive in the crossovers and in the conference tournaments. They thought that majority of conference championships were won by Lake Division schools. They made the conscious decision that they wanted to be in a conference with schools of the same size, similar enrollment and geography.”

With six teams leaving, conference tournaments and championships will be logistically more manageable. For example, a sixteen-team track meet becomes an eight-team meet. That will allow JV and varsity to compete in one conference meet, instead of separate JV and varsity meets.

There are still negatives to the Prairie schools moving out. Conference tournaments, although more manageable, will be less competitive in more individualized sports like wrestling. For wrestling, Grant, a Prairie school, often battled to win the conference title every year. Other Prairie individual wrestlers put up their own fights to win the conference championship for their respective weight class.

“I will miss the conference wrestling tournament,” said LHS Wresting Head Coach, Dale Eggert. “Having 14 teams competing made it a very tough tournament. Even though the other small schools besides Grant didn’t compete for the team title, they all had some top wrestlers that could compete for individual championships. And since most of those schools are 2A in the State Series (vs. 3A for the Lake schools), it would be our only time to compete with them.”