Luverne High School football coach Todd Oye (left) has a word with quarterback Andy Stegemann during a Southwest Conference game at Cardinal Field this past season. As the LHS Activities Director, Oye could be scheduling future Luverne games as a member of a new conference.By John RittenhouseCould a Luverne-St. James football rivalry develop in the near future?Could a Luverne High School hockey team make a road trip to New Ulm to play a conference game in years to come?Based on talks between school officials representing the Southwest and South Central Conferences, both scenarios could become a reality some day.The possibility of having the SWC and SSC merge is on the discussion table, and the future of some Luverne High School sports teams may be affected."If something were to change, it would be two years down the road," said LHS activities director Todd Oye. "Most of the scheduling for next year (2004-05 school year) already has been completed, so we’re looking two years down the road at the earliest."According to Oye, the SSC, a six-team conference formed by schools from New Ulm, Blue Earth, Fairmont, Waseca, St James and St. Peter initiated talks about a possible merger last year.Jackson County Central and Windom, two SWC schools that would be a good fit with the SSC geographically, expressed early interest in joining the conference.Not wanting to leave the five remaining SWC teams (Luverne, Worthington, Marshall, Pipestone and Redwood Valley) out in the cold after years of developing rivalries with them, JCC and Windom officials have gotten all SWC schools involved in the conference discussion.Oye said preliminary talks between the superintendents in all 13 schools have centered around football and hockey at this point. Talks about the other sports could develop in the future."What we’re looking at is finding a way to make scheduling easier. Filling our open dates in football and hockey would easier to schedule (if the conferences joined)," Oye said"Last year, we had to drive to Barnesville to play a football game. JCC had to play a game in Fergus Falls this year. The big benefit for us would be in scheduling hockey games. Right now we have our kids traveling up to the Twin Cities and to the Northeast to play games, but no one wants to drive down here and play us."Waseca, New Ulm, St. Peter and Fairmont all have hockey programs, and forming a conference with those schools would give the Cardinals a chance to have home and away games against those teams each season.Oye said all talks between a SWC-SCC joint venture are in the early stages, and nothing is certain.Discussions have included forming one big conference, and setting up a conference with two divisions (East and West, or, big and little schools).What Oye doesn’t see is tradition and competitive spirit developed by the current SWC schools lost in the future"We want to keep the rivalries we’ve developed in the SWC in tact," he said.Still, Oye realizes that losing JCC or Windom to the SCC would leave Luverne and the remaining SWC teams in a bind, and that’s why Luverne will remain involved in the SWC-SCC discussions."The difficult thing for us is our location," he said. "We’re bordered by Iowa to the south, and South Dakota to the west, so our options are limited. We’ll have to work out something if we lose JCC and Windom from the SWC."
