2022 conference reshuffling puts Gilman football in favorable spot

The Gilman football program will rejoin some of its former CloverWood Conference rivals in a new Central Wisconsin East eight-player football conference starting in the fall of 2022.

A new statewide eight-player football conference alignment cleared its last hurdle Friday with final approval from the WIAA’s Board of Control. The plan creates seven six-team conferences, one five-team conference and one eight-team league, the Peninsula Conference of far northeastern Wisconsin.

That puts the state’s total for eightplayer teams at 55 at the start of the 2022 season.

Gilman will join Athens, Greenwood, Owen-Withee, Thorp and Alma Center Lincoln in the Central Wisconsin East. The Pirates and Alma Center Lincoln will leave the Central Wisconsin West following the 2021 season after a twoyear affiliation with that league.

“In this area they went back to more of the old Lakeland Conference so to speak and the Cloverbelt Conference or Clover-Wood, however you want to put it,” Gilman head coach Robin Rosemeyer said. “They kind of went back to the way it was. It’s not surprising and kinda nice to see. I think it’s still probably going to be fluid every two years as more teams possibly embark on eight-man. Who knows? Maybe we’ll switch again.”

Gilman was a long-time rival with Greenwood, Owen-Withee and Thorp in the Small Cloverbelt and CloverWood conferences through 2019. Athens became a conference foe when the Clover-Wood was formed in 2008. Athens, Owen-Withee and Thorp were aligned by the WIAA with the Marawood Conference for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Thorp and Owen-Withee, however, are planning independent schedules for this fall. Green- wood is part of the Central Wisconsin East Conference in eight-player football for 2020 and 2021.

“We like it,” Rosemeyer said of the 2022 alignment. “It’ll be good competition and it’s people we’re familiar with. It does make sense where you’re bringing back the traditional teams that we used to play, really, always. It’ll be back to where it was in the past, which will be nice for school rivalries.”

Since 1962, Gilman has played Thorp and Owen-Withee more than 50 times and faced Greenwood 47 times.

The Central Wisconsin West in 2020 and 2021 consists of Gilman, Alma Center Lincoln, Phillips, New Auburn, Bruce and McDonell Central. Gilman won the league in 2020 with a perfect 5-0 record and went 7-1 overall. In 2022, the West will add Cornell and Lake Holcombe, who are ending their 11-man co-op after the 2021 season, as well as Prairie Farm. Phillips will depart for the Lakeland East eight-man conference.

Crossover games between the Central Wisconsin East and West are expected in the new format.

“We thought we might have another decision in a couple years about whether we could play 11-man again,” Rosemeyer said. “But when everybody else in your area is playing eight-man, why would you go back? Travel would be farther if that were an option for us. This might make that decision a little easier.”

In 2022, the end of the Lake Holcombe-Cornell co-op will affect the 11-player Lakeland Conference that currently includes Rib Lake-Prentice.

In other conference realignment action Friday, the board approved three fast-track applications that were not football related.

Altoona will move from the Mid-Western Soccer Conference into the Middle Border Conference for girls soccer only, beginning in the spring of 2022 and into the Middle Border from the West Division of the Cloverbelt for all other sports except football in the fall of 2021. The board also approved Bloomer entering the West Division of the Cloverbelt from the Heart O’North Conference in all sports except football in the fall of 2021.

The board remanded an 11-player football plan that impacts 23 schools back to the Conference Realignment Task Force, which will reconvene to re-evaluate the plan and four new proposals on April 6. Schools directly impacted by any reconsideration or changes to the existing plan will be notified. A plan will be brought back to the Board for final consideration at its April 16 meeting.