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Ok it’s been a week since the Suburban Conference announced its new divisions. While most years there are a few teams that bump up or down this year provided the biggest change in 14 seasons. The conference is going from four divisions to five and I have mixed emotions about the change.

When any conference adds teams there is always change and the league that has seen steady growth over the last 20 years has had its fair share. Teams have come and gone, and this year come back again. Excelsior Springs rejoins the league after leaving in 2007 for the Missouri River Valley Conference East division.

To me the move makes sense for Excelsior Springs, and it will be fun to see the Tigers compete with Kearney, Smithville and Platte County every year in every sport.

Excelsior’s move in brought the total to 28. That number is evenly divisible by four so my assumption was there would be four seven team conferences.

Well I was wrong and now there are three five-team leagues, a six-team league, and a seven-team league. The divisions are Gold (Blue Springs, Blue Springs South, Lee’s Summit West, Liberty North and Raymore-Peculiar), Silver (Lee’s Summit, Lee’s Summit North, Liberty, Park Hill, Park Hill South and Staley), Red (Fort Osage, North Kansas City, Oak Park, St. Joseph Central and Truman), White (Belton, Grain Valley, Platte County, Raytown and William Chrisman) and Blue (Excelsior Springs, Grandview, Kearney, Raytown South, Ruskin, Smithville and Winnetonka)

While the divisions are put together will all sports in mind around here at PrepsKC we focus on football. This new structure puts most (or all if Staley were to move up) of the Suburban Gold and Silver in Class 6. All the Red and White are currently in Class 5. The Blue features five Class 4 schools and two that are currently in Class 5 in Raytown South and Ruskin that have both been in Class 4 in recent years.

That looks like it makes things more balanced and maybe it does. We will see when the schedules come out. That is the one part of this that will be interesting. Making a schedule for two or three teams seems easy but 28 along with a group of out of conference opponents like Rockhurst, the Columbia schools and even a few cross-state line districts like Blue Valley sounds like a nightmare.

Hey, I love coming up with dream matchups of teams I would like to see play each other. Those games are fun to talk about and even more fun when they come together. Unfortunately dream matchups don’t fill out 28 football schedules.

I don’t envy those who will spend their time putting together the football schedules for the Suburban Conference next two-year cycle. Five divisions may help competition but filling out the week by schedule more of a nightmare than a dream.