Kishwaukee River Conference will add Plano and Sandwich for the 2023-24 school year

The Kishwaukee River Conference will add two members for the 2023-24 school year.

Plano and Sandwich, currently in the Interstate 8 Conference, will join the KRC in the fall bringing the membership to eight, the most the league has ever had.

The Kishwaukee River Conference was started in the 2015-16 school year with five former members of the Big Northern Conference East Division (Burlington Central, Harvard, Johnsburg, Marengo and Richmond-Burton) joining with Woodstock and Woodstock North out of the Fox Valley Conference.

Central left to join the FVC in the 2019-20 school year and the conference has competed with six members since then.

The KRC and I8C will continue their football divisional partnership for the 2023 season, then, in the fall of 2024, the KRC will play football as its own eight-team league. Currently, the larger schools (Sycamore, Morris, LaSalle-Peru, Ottawa, Kaneland and the Woodstocks) comprise the KRC/I8 White Division, while the smaller schools (Harvard, Johnsburg, Marengo, Plano, R-B, Rochelle and Sandwich) played in the Blue Division. Sandwich suspended its program last season for low numbers with players.

“We are confident that the strong athletic and extracurricular traditions of these two schools will be an integral part of the future of the conference,” the KRC stated through a news release on Wednesday.

Plano and Sandwich will have farther distances to travel than their current I8C arrangement, but the schools will line up better in terms of enrollment. Here are the enrollments of the eight schools that will be in the KRC: Woodstock (1,003), Woodstock North (958), Harvard (747), Plano (718), Marengo (662), R-B (624), Sandwich (623) and Johnsburg (595).