New conference on horizon? River-to-River member schools meet Monday to discuss disbanding, and reforming new southern Illinois conference

A new high school sports conference that could include Du Quoin and Pinckneyville may be on the horizon, and with it would come some major changes.

Talks surfaced this week of disbanding the Southern Illinois River-To-River Conference and forming a new conference that would include Du Quoin, Nashville, Benton, Murphysboro, West Frankfort and Harrisburg, along with the likely additions of Pinckneyville and Anna-Jonesboro.

This scenario would leave Herrin, Carterville and Massac County, three of the four biggest schools in the 12-school SIRR, outside looking in. (Murphysboro is the fourth).

The push for a new conference comes now that Sparta has left the River-to-River for the Cahokia Conference, a growing small-school conference. Sparta's departure leaves the Mississippi Division of the SIRR with only five schools. According to IHSA rules, conferences and divisions within conferences have to have at least six schools in order for the winningest football team to get an automatic bid to the IHSA playoffs.

A meeting of all 11 remaining River-to-River Conference schools will be held Monday.

Du Quoin Superintendent Matt Hickam said either Principal Tim McChristian or Athletic Director Derek Beard - or both - will attend the meeting for Du Quoin.

So far, there is no solid proposal on the table, Hickam said.

"There's been a lot of conjecture and rumors floating around since last night," he said Thursday. "But it's just conversation so far."

Hickam said Du Quoin must play in a conference or division with at least six schools. A five-team division is unsustainable, he said. Moreover, Du Quoin wants to continue playing schools with which it has historic relationships - like Pinckneyville, certainly, but other local schools as well.

"Every school will be trying to do whatever is best for their school," he said, of whatever proposal comes out of Monday's meeting. "We want all of our (Du Quoin) teams to be playing good competition."

The SIRR has been a 12-team, two division conference since being formed in 1993.

To form the SIRR, it recruited the charter members of the Southwest Egyptian Conference: Du Quoin, Murphysboro, Sparta, Pinckneyville, Nashville and Anna-Jonesboro; and adopted Benton, Herrin, Harrisburg and West Frankfort from the South Seven Conference.

Massac County, an independent school became a member as well, as did Chester High School.

In 2010, Chester left the SIRR for the Black Diamond Conference, and Carterville left the Black Diamond Conference to join the SIRR.

It is not known if the SIRR is in talks with any schools to be a replacement for Sparta.