EDWARDSVILLE - Edwardsville High School Athletic Director Alex Fox said he believes the Illinois High School Association decision to implement a district scheduling system for football starting with the 2021 season, could be positive.
“I think we were pretty much in favor of it early on because of the difficulty in getting football games scheduled. Some say this is a big schools issue. It is complicated across the board for everybody to schedule games.”
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Rivalry high school footbal games, including Edwardsville-Alton, East St. Louis-Edwardsville and others will likely continue. If those schools are not in Edwardsville’s division for football, he said there will be two non-conference games available at the start of the season.
There could be more travel for Edwardsville’s football team, but Fox said the school is already playing opponents from a distance away now, so it wouldn’t be that much different.
Fox is guessing O’Fallon, Belleville East and possibly Belleville West will be in Edwardsville’s district, but no one exactly knows at this point, he said.
Some transfer and eligibility issues passed, which were mostly commonsense things, he said. One of the most dramatic changes was the approval of the proposal to allow schools that are members of the Illinois 8-Man Football Association to participate in a post-season playoff and set a separate team and individual season situations for girls wrestling.
Edwardsville has female youth participating in wrestling, so the transition should be fairly natural.
“Female wrestling has come up through our club program and has a lot of youngsters and kids in general,” Fox said. “I think it will take off with its own series and season. It is something that will begin to grow.”
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