Triad to join Southwestern Conference

By Anthony Jones

[email protected]

 

The Triad Knights will be joining a new athletics conference for the 2026-2027 school year.

Triad, who currently competes in the Mississippi Valley Conference, received school board approval on Feb. 24 to move to the Southwestern Conference.

Current members of the Southwestern Conference include Alton, Belleville East, Belleville West, Collinsville, East St. Louis, Edwardsville and O’Fallon.

The decision to move to the Southwestern Conference comes after months of discussions to determine Triad’s best path moving forward. Another option given consideration was joining the South Seven Conference, which currently consists of Cahokia, Carbondale, Centralia, Marion and Mt. Vernon.

“I think this will raise the level of competitiveness overall among all sports and will better prepare our programs for the postseason, not to mention it will create more recruiting possibilities for our athletes. All of this combined with much less travel for all of our programs at every level compared to joining the South Seven made this a great fit for our district for now,” Triad Athletic Director Kenny Deatherage spoke of choosing the Southwestern.

Triad will not be the only Mississippi Valley squad to join the Southwestern, as Mascoutah has also received board approval to join the league.

Former Southwestern squad Granite City is poised to rejoin the league, pending approval from their board. Collinsville is expected to return to the conference for football.

With the Southwestern expanding to 10 schools, two divisions will be created.

Triad, Mascoutah, Collinsville, Granite City and Alton are slated to compete within one division. East St. Louis, Edwardsville, O’Fallon, Belleville East and Belleville West will make up the other division.

The two divisions are mostly split by school enrollment, with Triad competing in the smaller school division. Division names are yet to be decided.

A determination has yet to be made regarding if these divisions will remain the same for sports that all 10 schools do not participate in.

Under this format, divisions will compete for separate conference championships and all-conference honors. Cross-division play will occur, but will vary by sport.

In football, several proposals are currently under consideration for cross-division play. A locked conference format, where teams only play conference opponents, is not currently being considered.

Triad first joined the Mississippi Valley Conference in 1971 as a founding member alongside Civic Memorial, East Alton-Wood River, Highland, Jersey, Mascoutah and Roxana.

The Knights first left the league in 1978, starting an eight year stretch of competing as an independent before joining the South Central Conference. Triad rejoined the Mississippi Valley Conference in 1993, where they have competed for the past 32 years.

“We will now be a part of a stable and highly competitive conference that is respected throughout the state of Illinois. We are going to miss the MVC as I love working with every school in the conference on a daily basis and have created some lifelong relationships with those guys, but I feel this change will benefit Triad and our student athletes for years to come,” Deatherage remarked of departing their long time home.

With the league’s current contract expires after the 2025-2026 school year, other departures from the Mississippi Valley Conference were expected.

Deatherage explained that the expected departures influenced his decision to search for a new conference, “With the ever changing landscape of conference realignment and schools continually looking for various levels of competition, it was evident that the traditional Mississippi Valley was not going to last much longer.  We decided to be proactive and explore our options.”

Triad’s Louis Yohannes races past Granite City defenders last season. (Photo by Anthony Jones)