Coultas says Cougars will play whoever they can play

By Editor | December 14, 2023 |

By BETH ZUMWALT

The Illinois High School Association is considering eliminating conferences and going to districts in football.
The concept is that seven or eight teams of similar size and picked geographically would be in a district. The result is thought to be teams of equal size would play one another and traveling long districts would be eliminated.
“It will change the dynamic of the football season,” Matt Coultas, coach of the West Central Wildcats, said. “It could affect the old rivalries.”
That is what Pleasant Hill’s Ron Edwards said also.
The affect on the landscape is what has Pleasant Hill voting no on the matter.
“We have a good, solid conference,” Ron Edwards of Pleasant Hill, said.”Our conference hasn’t changed since 1997. All of our schools are within a distance that is not a hardship.”
Pleasant Hill, who coops with Western, belongs to the Western Illinois Valley Conference. which is a combination of the WIVC and the former Western Area Conference. The two combined in 1997.
“It’s a 12 team conference split into north and south districts,”Edwards said. “Every two years two teams roll out and into the other division, so you play different teams,but all within the conference.”
Edwards said that the Wolves have played Carrollton and Winchester since the Pleasant Hill football program started.
“I’d hate to lose that tradition,” Edwards said.
The WIVC has 12 teams, in order of enrollment, Beardstown, 422, Unity 332, Routt, 266, Camp Point, 247,West Central, 241, Triopia, 228, White Hall, 222, Greenfield-NW, 221, Brown County, 215, Pleasant Hill, 214, Calhoun, 193 and Carrollton, 190.
Coultas said he has seen proposed maps of the proposed districts, but isn’t sure of their origin.
“One map has us going north,” he said. “The other map has us going south, with us playing Dupo, Madison, Belleville Althoff. It is all up in the air now.”
Voting on the change in football format started last Monday and will end Dec. 17.
Both Coultas and Edwards say that based on the Jacksonville meeting and conversations with other schools, the vote is fairly well split.
“They tried this a few years ago and it passed,” Coultas said. “But, before the season started, they took another vote and voted it down. We will play whoever we can play.”