The Bluegrass Conference is a

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

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Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

. Located in South-central Iowa, the conference is home to some of the smallest schools in the state, including three of the smallest public schools in Iowa (Orient-Macksburg, Diagonal, and Moulton-Udell).

Members

History

The conference originated before 1960. Some of the members in the early days included Osceola, Bedford, Mount Ayr, Lamoni, Seymour, Corydon, and Leon. Lenox and Mormon Trail of Humeston joined the conference in 1960, as Osceola departed. In 1962, four schools left the conference to join the newly formed Tall Corn Conference. This left the conference with Lamoni, Leon, Mormon Trail, Corydon, Seymour, and Moravia. As the years went by, some schools changed names and Southeast Warren and Melcher-Dallas joined the conference, so that by 1990 the conference looked like this: *

Lamoni In the Book of Mormon, Lamoni (; believed to mean "Lamanite" or "of Laman") is a Lamanite king. The missionary Ammon converts him back to the Law of Moses. After this, Lamoni becomes righteous again. Lamoni was a lesser king of part of the gr ...

* Melcher-Dallas *

Moravia Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The me ...

Mormon Trail The Mormon Trail is the long route from Illinois to Utah that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints traveled for 3 months. Today, the Mormon Trail is a part of the United States National Trails System, known as the Mormon ...

* Wayne * S.E. Warren * Central Decatur (of Leon) * Seymour After losing some of the bigger schools to other

conferences A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main pu ...

, the Bluegrass reached out to many of the smaller schools in the area. These new schools were some of the smallest in the state. The Bluegrass Conference operated with 12 teams for a while, but with three schools having been shut down in recent years, the conference is now left with just nine schools. In 2002, Fox Valley Community School in

Milton Milton may refer to: Names * Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname) ** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet * Milton (given name) ** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...

closed its doors, after the district voted to shut down the school and allow the pupils to open enroll where they wished. The next casualty came in 2008, when Russell became the first public school to be shut down by the state in over a decade. East Monona had been the most recent. Then, in 2010, Lineville-Clio was closed by the state. Currently, the conference hosts four of the six smallest public schools in the state, with Diagonal (26 BEDs), Orient-Macksburg (35), Moulton-Udell (38), and Mormon Trail (45). Not all conference schools are in as bad of shape when it comes to enrollment numbers, but all schools are easily in the 1A classification (the smallest classification for schools in Iowa). Starting in the 2013–14 academic year, the following schools joined the conference: *

Ankeny Christian Academy Ankeny Christian Academy (ACA) is a private Christian school located in Ankeny, Polk County, Iowa. It is an independent, non-denominational school serving students from preschool through 12th grade. The school is accredited by the state of Iow ...

(Ankeny) * Grand View Christian School (Des Moines) * Iowa Christian Academy (West Des Moines) * Orient-Macksburg Despite the enrollment figures, all schools but Diagonal and Orient-Macksburg play

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

, fielding 8-man teams. Before Russell and Fox Valley shut down, they also played 8-man football. Most of the schools also field teams in

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

, and

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. Iowa Christian Academy officials announced on November 28, 2018, that the school would close. Students were encouraged to attend Grandview Christian School.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bluegrass Conference (Iowa) High school sports in Iowa