Updated: DuPage Valley, SouthWest Suburban plan to merge next season

Tired of chasing games, filling schedules and dealing with other issues, DeKalb athletic director Peter Goff said Tuesday the DuPage Valley Conference and SouthWest Suburban Conference will form a football-only league beginning in the 2024 season.

The SouthWest Suburban/DuPage Valley will be split into three divisions, with teams assigned to one of the three based on a combination of success formula and enrollment.

DeKalb, one of only two schools in the new conference with an enrollment of less than 2,000, will be in the Green Division with Bradley-Bourbonnais, Stagg, Waubonsie Valley and Lincoln-Way Central.

The Blue will be the top division and feature Lockport, Neuqua Valley, Lincoln-Way East, Naperville North and Homewood-Flossmoor.

The Red Division will feature Sandburg, Naperville Central, Metea Valley, Lincoln-Way West and Andrew.

With Bolingbrook set to leave the SouthWest Suburban to join the Southwest Prairie after this season, the SWSC faced the prospect of entering 2024 as a nine-team league, which created some logistical problems that the 10-team, two-division league that had existed in its current form since 2019 had not previously had to deal with.

“We’d been in discussions with the DVC for a while,” Lincoln-Way East athletic director Mark Vander Kooi said. “And we had already started a relationship this year by playing some crossovers with them, and that worked out well. But what really pushed this through was Bolingbrook leaving the conference and leaving us with an odd number of teams.”

Other options were explored to try to fill the vacancy left by Bolingbrook before entering the merger, but no logical fit was realized.

“We explored multiple options, and trying to find another team to even things out was definitely one of them,” Vander Kooi said. “We weren’t able to do that. And yes, it is still an odd number of teams, but with more teams you can play a different schedule, and the way we arranged it was based on enrollment and success factor.

“So hopefully that allows for an equitable schedule for all the teams involved.”

Since the new divisions of the conference will have only five teams, the divisional winner won’t qualify for an automatic playoff berth, as divisions must have a minimum of six teams to get that designation, per IHSA rules. But although that won’t be in play, this alignment likely means more opportunity overall for the teams involved.

“We have a lot of pride in the SouthWest Suburban Conference, but with nine schools, we’d be playing everyone and knocking each other out of the playoffs,” Vander Kooi said. “So in our minds, that was where nine teams didn’t work. So now with 15, obviously you still have to earn it, but this would allow for some nonconference games where you can position yourself and give more opportunity to get more teams into the playoffs.”

One of the biggest appeals to the DVC faction of this merger, Goff said, was teams could discontinue playing the same team twice. The league has a “bowl game” Week 9 matchup entering its third year this season, with conference teams playing a second league game against an opponent they’ve already faced.

Matchups this year will be based on record and decided after Week 8.

“They were at an odd number, and we’re always chasing games, so they approached us,” Goff said. “This was probably about three proposals, and we all agreed on this.”

Green teams will play one crossover game against each of the other two divisions. The Red and Blue divisions will play two crossover games against each other and one crossover with the Green.

Goff said one small thing is the teams in the Green Division will have a bye to fill, potentially late in the season, with DeKalb’s coming in Week 3.

He said that Week 3 game is the only piece of the schedule still incomplete for the Barbs, though he has a couple of plans and is just waiting to see which fits the best.

“We’re going up with schools now that have success factors and enrollments similar to us,” Goff said. “In our division ... we’re not going up against schools with 75% bigger enrollments. When we came into the DVC, we were on an island by ourselves, and we had to jump in, and we did. We’ve competed in football every year.”

As it stands now, the Barbs will open the season against Sycamore at NIU, then travel to Plainfield South in Week 2. In Week 4 they’d host Lincoln-Way Central before a road game at Neuqua Valley. They’d host Andrew, travel to Waubonsie Valley and Bradley-Bourbonnais, then host Stagg in Week 9 to close the regular season.