Hampshire to join FVC for 2011-12 school year

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CARPENTERSVILLE – Hampshire will join fellow District 300 high schools Jacobs and Dundee-Crown in the Fox Valley Conference after a unanimous vote by the school board Monday night.

Hampshire officially will leave the Big Northern Conference and become the 14th school in the FVC, but not until the 2011-12 school year.

The move will take Hampshire from being the second-largest school in the BNC to one of the smaller schools in the FVC. It also will open the school to more levels for underclass athletics and other non-athletic extracurricular activities.

School Board member Monica Clark questioned whether the change could be delayed for a year. Principal Chuck Bumbales said, however, that the FVC would withdraw its offer for Hampshire to join if the district delayed the decision.

Bumbales said the school would maintain rivalries with some BNC schools.

“Our goal is to keep a lot of those contests, like with Burlington Central, going despite the conference change,” he said.

The FVC grew to 13 schools this year when Woodstock North began playing varsity sports. The FVC had approached Hampshire about coming in with Woodstock North, but Hampshire administrators did not believe the school was ready.

Growth in the Hampshire area and school-boundary changes have increased the school’s enrollment from about 650 in 2007 to about 1,015 today.

Hampshire will be in the FVC Fox Division – with the smaller-enrollment schools – while Prairie Ridge, the largest school in the Fox, will shift to the Valley Division.

“In some sports we’ll be a little more competitive than others,” Bumbales said, adding that a lot can change before the conference change occurs.