Realigned Hawkeye 10 Conference Will Be In Place For 2026-2027
Red Oak, Shenandoah and Council Bluffs Lewis Central have received formal approval from the Hawkeye 10 Conference to leave the league at the end of the 2025-2026 season.
According to an Oct. 9 press release, the conference’s Board of Control voted unanimously to approve the request of the three schools to leave and begin play for the 2026-2027 seasons. Red Oak and Shenandoah are both joining the Western Iowa Conference while Council Bluffs Lewis Central will move to the Missouri River Conference.
As part of that vote, the conference formally approved the addition of Carroll to the conference, also for the 2026-2027 season.
Hawkeye 10 Conference policy had required any team leaving or joining the conference give two-year notice but the board voted to waive that requirement to get the realignments “on the same page.” All the conferences involved were in agreement with that decision.
Glenwood Activities Director Jeff Bissen called the board’s decision “best for everybody involved.”
“I think this is a great thing for our league to have everyone leaving and coming at the same time,” he said. “From a scheduling perspective, this makes things easier versus one school leaving one year and the other two a year later.”
With the Hawkeye 10 Board of Control signing off on the departures, the only hurdle remaining is the final approval of the move by the newly formed State Conference Realignment Committee. That committee is part of new legislation that went into effect July 1 which now requires all schools in the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union to seek approval for any conference realignment. Just when that committee can be seated or what its mandate will be remains a question mark.
“We’ve been told February at the earliest,” Bissen said. “But this committee has to rubber stamp any conference movement. We feel among the five conferences that this is a slam dunk and it will happen but they will have to sign off on it because it happened after July 1. We feel it will happen so we’re just getting all our paperwork together showing these were unanimous decisions so it’s an easy decision for them.”
The Hawkeye 10’s decision would appear to bring to an end to the flurry of conference realignment comings and goings that began this summer with the Missouri River Conference’s invitations to a handful of schools, Glenwood among them.
While Glenwood – and Harlan – ultimately turned down the offer that Lewis Central accepted to join its new league, the Hawkeye 10 Conference has seen its share of teams come and go over the years.
Red Oak and Shenandoah were both charter members of the original Hawkeye 6 Conference, along with Atlantic, Creston, Clarinda and Villisca. The conference was formed in 1930 when those six schools broke
away from the former Little 10 Conference, which at that time included Glenwood, Bedford, Corning and Sidney.
The additions of Corning in 1946 and Glenwood in 1951 turned the Hawkeye 6 into the Hawkeye 8 Conference. Villisca and Corning left the conference in the 1960s with Lewis Central and Harlan joining in the 1970s to give the league eight schools.
The league became the Hawkeye 10 Conference in 1993 when Kuemper Catholic and Denison were added. Council Bluffs St. Albert came aboard in 2013 as the 11th school, but the conference has retained its name as the Hawkeye 10.
When the Hawkeye 10 Conference looked to expand this summer, it sent invitations to Carroll and Treynor. Both schools were also invited to join the league more than a decade ago but both declined then. Treynor also turned down the invitation this time around and will remain in the Western Iowa Conference.
The loss of Red Oak, Shenandoah and Lewis Central does have geographic considerations for Glenwood – they are three of the closest conference schools.
The addition of Carroll now, however, would seem a natural competitive fit – they compete in Class 3A in most sports – if not a perfect geographic one. While Kuemper Catholic is also in Carroll, its two-hour driving distance makes it the longest road trip among conference schools for Glenwood.
“The were interested this time because their demographics match up better with the Hawkeye 10 Conference than the Raccoon River Conference,” Bissen said. “They make sense for us because we already play Kuemper and they’re a 3A school and they will be able to offer a lot of the same programs at the same level we already play. We feel as a league, even with losing three teams, adding Carroll is a great representative for the conference.”
Lewis Central’s move would appear to be a competitive decision. The Titans instantly going from being the largest school in the Hawkeye 10 to one of the smaller enrollment schools in a league that includes Bishop Heelan, Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln, Council Bluffs Thomas Jefferson, LeMars, Sergeant Bluff-Luton, Sioux City East, Sioux City North, and Sioux City West.
Red Oak and Shenandoah’s high school enrollment also factors in their decision. Red Oak and Shenandoah rank near the bottom of the Hawkeye 10 Conference with 220 and 231 students respectively. Only Council Bluffs St. Albert has fewer students than Red Oak with 135. In contrast, Lewis Central has 792 students, Denison-Schleswig has 587 and Glenwood has 438.
As members of the WIC, Red Oak and Shenandoah will be in athletic competition with school districts of comparable size. They join an existing WIC that includes AHSTW, Logan-Magnolia, Missouri Valley, Riverside, Treynor, Tri-Center and Underwood after the departures of Audubon and IKM-Manning.
“I think they want to play equal or similar demographics in student populations and what they’re able to offer from a program standpoint,” Bissen said. “It’s hard to be competitive with that big difference (in enrollment). Some 3A schools might say the same thing. These things can be cyclical with good years and down years but it’s easier to be competitive when you’re comparing apples to apples in enrollment.”