April 19, 2024
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Seneca, Dwight among 8 teams forming Chicago Prairie Football League

Walther Christian, St. Bede, Marquette, Westmont, Elmwood Park, Ridgewood will also join new conference

By J.T. Pedelty, Steve Soucie and Charlie Ellerbrock
Seneca’s Nathan Grant breaks through the Winnebago line to score on a run in the 1st quarter during the Class 3A first round playoff game on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022 at Seneca.

Seneca’s Nathan Grant breaks through the Winnebago line during a first-round playoff game last week. Seneca and Dwight will be leaving the Vermilion Valley Football Alliance and joining six other schools to form a new football conference opening play in 2023-24. (Tom Sistak for Shaw Local News Network)

The reigning champions of the Vermilion Valley Football Alliance North will not be returning in 2023 to defend their conference crown.

Colin Likas of the Champaign News-Gazette reported Wednesday morning that Salt Fork athletic director Dustin Dees announced the Vermilion Valley – currently made up of two six-team divisions – would be moving to a closed-conference format for football beginning next school year because of the departure of Seneca and Dwight.

Dwight and Seneca will be joining Marquette, St. Bede, Walther Christian, Westmont, Elmwood Park and Ridgewood in forming a new conference tentatively named the Chicago Prairie Football League.

Early Wednesday afternoon, Seneca athletic director Ted O’Boyle confirmed the moves, adding that the new football-only conference is pending IHSA approval.

“We’ve decided to form a new football league that’s been in the mix here for a while,” O’Boyle said. “We’re kind of glad that we were able to get eight teams in order to give us a solid football league.”

In late October, the Tri-County Conference – which does not sponsor football but has a handful of football-playing schools – announced it voted to accept St. Bede Academy as a member beginning with the 2023-24 school year. That move would have left St. Bede, currently a member of the Three Rivers Conference alongside regional rivals Princeton, Hall, Bureau Valley and Mendota, without a conference for football.

Now both St. Bede and Marquette will be co-founders of a football league while also being conference partners in the Tri-County for sports other than football.

A longtime member of the Tri-County in all sports other than football, Marquette has played as an independent in football since leaving the dissolving Northeastern Athletic Conference after the 2019 football season.

“This means I won’t have to worry all the time,” Marquette AD Todd Hopkins said. “That there are bigger schools in there is a concern for us, because we’re the second-smallest school still playing 11-man football, but it’s better than having to try and find opponents for weeks 4, 5, 6 and 7 every year. We kind of fell into a pot of gold the last two, three years with the Heart of Illinois needing to find a few games, then with the Lincoln Trail during the COVID[-19] year and Annawan-Wethersfield this year.”

“It’s a good fit locally with three rivalry games against St. Bede, Seneca and Dwight – those games should have great crowds, a great atmosphere – and the other four teams up north should be a good draw too when they come here and we go there.

“This isn’t something that was just thought up and we went with it. It’s something that’s been in discussion for two years now, and not just by us. There’s a core of schools who have been speaking, not necessarily all eight that are in it, but it’s a few years in the making, and we’re happy with it.”

Seneca and Dwight were both members of the Interstate 8 Conference in all sports before leaving to join the Sangamon Valley Conference – Dwight in 2014-15, Seneca in 2018-19. The Sangamon Valley itself began to dissolve, and its remaining members were absorbed into the Vermilion Valley Conference to form the Vermilion Valley Football Alliance in time for the 2021 season.

“The farthest [opponent] that we’ll have [in the new conference], depending on traffic, we’re looking at an hour and a half,” O’Boyle said. “We were going 2 1/2 hours to your Westvilles and your Ridge Farms. So definitely it’s a better deal for us travel-wise, and it also gives us the chance to have a couple nonconference games of our own scheduling in Weeks 1 and 2.

“And 100% [forging conference football rivalries with nearby schools such as Marquette and St. Bede] was one of our biggest draws. We already have a great rivalry with Dwight in all sports. Obviously that’s going to continue, but to bring that rivalry in football with Marquette and St. Bede was something we were very, very interested in.”

Elmwood Park, Westmont (which played only six varsity games this season) and Ridgewood were left looking for a conference football home when three of their current conference partners – Wheaton St. Francis, Aurora Central Catholic and IC Catholic – announced their intention to leave the Metro Suburban Conference to join the CCL/ESCC. Five more Metro Suburban teams followed suit to join the Chicagoland Christian Conference, leaving only four members.

Riverside-Brookfield has not announced its conference intentions for next season.

Walther Christian was briefly a football conference foe of Marquette’s in the Northeastern Athletic and also spent time in recent years as an independent.

The remaining members of the Vermilion Valley Football Alliance will be Fithian Oakwood, Clifton Central, Momence, Watseka, Bismarck-Henning/Rossville-Alvin (BHRA), Hoopeston Area, Georgetown, Westville, Iroquois West and Salt Fork. Those teams seem likely to play a closed schedule, facing only each other.