SWC provides new opportunities in sports for Ash Grove student athletes

Beginning with the 2018-19 school year, the Ash Grove School District worked in cooperation with similar-sized districts to create the Southwest  Conference. Besides Ash Grove, the district consists of seven other schools: Diamond, Lockwood, Marionville, Miller, Pleasant Hope, Pierce City and Sarcoxie.
Chris Thompson, principal at Ash Grove High School, said the new conference provides Ash Grove student athletes “balanced competition.”
“The schools have improving facilities and are close in proximity,” he said. “The conference provides relatively good travel opportunities for our families and students to support our teams.”
The new conference also allows Ash Grove athletes the chance to play sports with teams from high schools whose enrollments are similar in size to Ash Grove’s, Thompson said.
“This decision provides a great chance for Ash Grove to continue building strong competition with high schools that are closely aligned regarding student enrollment in the high schools,” he said. “The 2018-2019 enrollment figures used by Missouri State High School Activities Association were Ash Grove, 158 (students); Diamond, 183; Lockwood, 87; Marionville, 173; Miller, 137; Pleasant Hope, 169; Pierce City, 151; and Sarcoxie, 199.”
By contrast, when Ash Grove played in the Mid-Lakes conference, the students were playing against teams from larger schools. For example, Thompson said, Fair Grove had enrollment of 244 students, Stockton had 231 and Strafford had 268.
Thompson said Ash Grove athletes have benefited from the change in conference. “We wanted a progressive conference in terms of competition and making all our sports better,” he said. “We feel like the new conference affords our student athletes opportunities to compete night in and night out with comparable-sized school districts. During our first year with the SWC, AGHS was able to bring home a conference championship in girls track, co-champions in volleyball, girls basketball finished second, baseball finished third and overall AGHS finish third in combined conference standings of the SWC. We feel that our student athletes and coaches feel like they can challenge for a conference championship every year and that is exciting for us, because everyone wants a chance to win a conference championship.”
Thompson said the district looks forward to another year of athletic competition within the Southwest Conference.
“As a district and high school, we look forward to continuing to compete at a high level with some of the top schools in our area,” he said. “We have athletic relationships with many of the schools in the Mid-Lakes Conference … already. We look forward to continuing those relationships and building new, positive ones with the rest of the schools in SWC for years to come.”