WIC Pres Irwin Talks Audubon Departure, Future of Conference

WIC Pres Irwin Talks Audubon Departure, Future of Conference –

(6-20-25) – Changes are coming to the Western Iowa Conference.

Audubon announced earlier this week their intention to leave the conference and join the Rolling Valley for the 2027-28 season. Meanwhile, other schools, such as IKM-Manning, are expected to make decision on their future with the conference and the WIC has made offers to join the conference to 10 different schools.

WIC Board of Control president Andy Irwin talked with KNOD Sports about the recent decision for Audubon to leave the conference.

“Ultimately at the end of the day, the WIC understands and respects the decision that they've made and you know, our goal right now is to ensure that they have a smooth transition from the WIC into the Rolling Valley and we wish them the best and continued success in the Rolling Valley.”

Irwin says plans have been put in motion on the future of the conference, even before the possibility of Audubon and IKM-Manning leaving.

“We have had discussions for about two years now on what we wanted to do as a conference, not just in terms of the offerings that we had for activities and what we were doing as a conference, but we wanted to look at how we could improve our conference and how we could potentially expand our conference.”

The potential for expansion in the WIC is to enhance the conference for all students on and off the field, according to Irwin.

The process of offering conference invites to had several factors for the Board of Control to consider.
“In the Western Iowa Conference,” said Irwin, “We looked at geographic location, school enrollment, activity offerings, district stability, football classification, and facilities availability. Those are very basic things that we started with. We wanted to look and say just geographically in southwest Iowa, what are schools that match that criteria and that are similar to schools that are current members in the Western Iowa Conference.”

Irwin says the list of 10 schools decided by the Board of Control were sent offers on June 11th and will have until Aug 1st to notify the conference of their interest.

Full interview with WIC Board of Control President Andy Irwin is available above.

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