West Nodaway Drops North Nodaway Cooperative

On Wednesday, December 9th, the West Nodaway School Board voted by a 6-1 vote to drop the football cooperative agreement with North Nodaway that had been in place since 2014. West Nodaway will enter an all sports cooperative agreement with Nodaway-Holt, which is leaving its cooperative with South Holt. That will leave both North Nodaway and South Holt on the drawing board as far as a football program is concerned. On Thursday, the Nodaway-Holt school board approved a five year cooperative agreement with West Nodaway that covers all sports.

The upper limit for an eight man football cooperative for Missouri is 150 students. The combined enrollment for West Nodaway, Nodaway-Holt, and North Nodaway is 155, which would put them over the limit, unless they wanted to go 11 man. 

North Nodaway Superintendent Chris Turpin said that he would be looking at all of North Nodaway’s options. Worth County and Northeast Nodaway border North Nodaway to the south and east, but both schools are happy with their current cooperative. Maryville borders North Nodaway to the south, which means that North Nodaway is free to pursue an agreement with Platte Valley, consisting of Jefferson and South Nodaway. A cooperative of those three schools would be close to 130 students, which is below the threshold of 150 students. Similarly, North Harrison is bordered to the south by South Harrison, an 11 man power, meaning they were free to make their cooperative agreement with Pattonsburg.

The other option for North Nodaway would be to strike out on their own. That would involve figuring out how many students would be needed to field a competitive program. Back in the 1970’s, North Nodaway dropped their football program for a few years due to lack of numbers and restarted it when interest revived later that decade.

Previously, North Nodaway had conducted a survey regarding interest in an all-sports cooperative. Responses were receptive to the idea, but less receptive if West Nodaway were involved. Most students were willing to be part of such a cooperative. 

MSHSAA member schools can have cooperative agreements with different schools for different sports. For instance, Worth County can continue their football cooperative with Northeast Nodaway and enter into a basketball cooperative with North Nodaway. The complication is that a basketball cooperative agreement with North Nodaway would force Worth County to compete in Class 2 in basketball, since the combined enrollment for the two schools is 129, and the cutoff for Class 1 is 78. Such a cooperative with Northeast Nodaway would also require a move up to Class 2 in basketball, since the combined enrollment would be 105. 

However, schools can compete in Class 2 in basketball and still offer eight man football. That is because the cutoff for Class 1 (78) is much lower than the cutoff for eight man football (150). The new West Nodaway and Nodaway-Holt sports cooperative would compete in Class 2 in basketball, since their combined enrollment is 105 students; however, since their combined enrollment is less than 150, they can still compete in eight man football.