Interstate Eight Conference

The Interstate Eight Conference (Interstate 8 or I–8) is an athletic conference of Illinois high schools that are members of the Illinois High School Association (IHSA). The conference currently has six member schools throughout Northern Illinois that compete in 12 different sports (boys' basketball, girls' basketball, girls' volleyball, boys' golf, girls' golf, football, boys' soccer, girls' soccer, wrestling, baseball, softball, cross country, and track and field).

The Interstate Eight began in 1979 and originally had eight schools— Coal City, Dwight, Marseilles, Plano, Reed-Custer, Seneca, Wilmington, and Yorkville. Sandwich soon entered the I-8 when Marseilles dropped out.Original document, "1980 Interstate Eight All Conference Softball Team", which included conference softball standings. Wilmington and Yorkville did not have softball teams in 1980. In 1991, Yorkville was replaced by Lisle. In 2006 Herscher, Manteno, Peotone, and Westmont joined the conference. Despite the conference growing from eight to 12 teams, the conference name remained Interstate 8. Dwight left the conference prior to the 2014–15 season while Streator joined the conference. In 2019–20, Reed-Custer, Manteno, Peotone, Herscher, Wilmington, Seneca, Streator, Coal City, Westmont and Lisle left the conference leaving only Plano and Sandwich in the conference. That year, the conference added six schools from the soon to be defunct Northern Illinois Big 12 Conference. These included Kaneland, LaSalle-Peru, Morris, Ottawa, Rochelle, and Sycamore. These moves left Plano as the only remaining founding member of the conference.

In 2022, Sandwich High School and Plano High School announcing to leave the conference to join Kishwaukee River Conference starting in 2023–24 season. Plano was the final remaining original I8C member, completing nearly 45 seasons. This left the Interstate Eight with, ironically, only six schools. All of which are the former NI-Big 12 schools.

Most of the member schools are/were in rural/smaller towns. Former members Westmont and Lisle are suburbs of Chicago but enrollments are small in size. Westmont's population is divided between the varying schools in the area, including high schools in Darien, Woodridge, Hinsdale, Bolingbrook, Naperville, Lisle, Lombard, and Glen Ellyn. Lisle's enrollment is small, due to Lisle's relatively small size as a city, as well as being located east of Naperville, which has at least four high schools in the immediate vicinity, as well as the Glenbard schools and Wheaton-Warrenville South all being within a close proximity to the high school.

The Conference is divided into Large and Small divisions during football season and teams only play members of their division for the conference schedule. Baseball and softball are also divided into North and South divisions. In all other sports, the conference is undivided.

Members

There are six current members of the conference

Current members

Former Members

Membership Timeline

DateFormat = yyyy
ImageSize = width:1000 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = from:1979 till:2024
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
PlotArea = right:20 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 #> to display a count on left side of graph, use "left:20" to suppress the count, use "left:20"<#
Colors = id:barcolor
id:line value:pink
id:bg value:white
id:Full value:rgb(0.742,0.727,0.852) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports
id:FullxF value:rgb(0.551,0.824,0.777) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports except for football
id:AssocF value:rgb(0.98,0.5,0.445) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member for football only
id:AssocOS value:rgb(0.78,0.391,0.654) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all (consider identifying in legend or a footnote)
id:OtherC1 value:rgb(0.996,0.996,0.699) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference
id:OtherC2 value:rgb(0.988,0.703,0.383) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference where OtherC1 has already been used, to distinguish the two

PlotData=
width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s

bar:1 color:Full from:1979 till:2019 text:Coal City (1979-2019)

bar:2 color:Full from:1979 till:2014 text:Dwight (1979-2014)

bar:3 color:Full from:1979 till:1985 text:Marseilles (1979-1985)

bar:4 color:Full from:1979 till:2023 text:Plano (1979-2023)

bar:5 color:Full from:1979 till:2019 text:Reed-Custer (1979-2019)

bar:6 color:Full from:1979 till:2018 text:Seneca (1979-2018)

bar:7 color:Full from:1979 till:2019 text:Wilmington (1979-2019)

bar:8 color:Full from:1979 till:1991 text:Yorkville (1979-1991)

bar:9 color:Full from:1985 till:2023 text:Sandwich (1985-2023)

bar:10 color:Full from:1991 till:2019 text:Lisle (1991-2019)

bar:11 color:AssocF from:2002 till:2006 text:Manteno (2002-2019)

bar:11 color:Full from:2006 till:2019 text:

bar:12 color:AssocF from:2002 till:2006 text:Peotone (2002-2019)

bar:12 color:Full from:2006 till:2019 text:

bar:13 color:Full from:2006 till:2019 text:Herscher (2006-2019)

bar:14 color:Full from:2006 till:2018 text:Westmont (2006-2019)

bar:14 color:FullxF from:2018 till:2019 text:

bar:15 color:Full from:2014 till:2019 text:Streator (2014-2019)

bar:16 color:Full from:2019 shift:(-4,-4) till:end text:Kaneland (2019-present)

bar:17 color:Full from:2019 shift:(-20,-4) till:end text:LaSalle-Peru (2019-present)

bar:18 color:Full from:2019 shift:(0,-4) till:end text:Morris (2019-present)

bar:19 color:Full from:2019 shift:(0,-4) till:end text:Ottawa (2019-present)

bar:20 color:Full from:2019 shift:(-1,-4) till:end text:Rochelle (2019-present)

bar:21 color:Full from:2019 shift:(-6,-4) till:end text:Sycamore (2019-present)

ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:2 start:1979
TextData =

fontsize:L

textcolor:black

pos:(0,30) tabs:(400-center)

text:^"I8C Membership History"
#> If the chart uses more than one bar color, add a legend by selecting the appropriate fields from the following six options (use only the colors that are used in the graphic.) Leave a blank line after the end of the timeline, then add a line with the selected values from the list, separated by a space. <#

State titles

Football

Football is based on an 8 class system since 2001.

*Plano (2006 3A, 2007 3A)
*Coal City (1993 2A)
*Seneca (1990 2A)
*Wilmington (2014 3A)

Boys baseball

*Lisle (2013 2A)
* Wilmington (2003, 2005)
*Reed-Custer (1985) (2016)
*Herscher (1999) (2015)

Wrestling

*Wilmington (2007, 2008, 2009)
*Sandwich (1991, 1997, 1999, 2001)
*Reed-Custer (2010,2012)

Boys basketball

*Seneca (2005–06 A)

Boys golf

*Dwight (1980)

Boys soccer

*Lisle (2010 1A)

Girls soccer

*Manteno (2009 1A)
*Manteno (2014 1A)

Competitive cheerleading

*Dwight (2013)
*Wilmington(2016)

Competitive Dance Team

*Peotone (2012 1A)

Boys cross country

Cross Country is based on a 3 class system since 2007.
*Seneca (1989 A)
*Kaneland (2019 AA)

Girls cross country

Cross Country is based on a 3 class system since 2007.
*Herscher (1991 A, 1992 A, 1996 A)

Girls track and field

*Herscher (1996)

Girls softball

*Coal City (2010)

Girls volleyball

*Lisle (1985)

Scholastic Bowl

Lisle (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 wins)

References

External links

Interstate 8 Conference
{{Illinois High School Association

High school sports conferences and leagues in the United States
Illinois high school sports conferences
High school sports in Illinois