**Breaking news: LQPV opts out of West Central Conference

Beginning in 2013-14, Lac qui Parle Valley will no longer be a member of the West Central Conference. Sauk Centre, Melrose, Paynesville Area and Minnewaska Area join 7 other schools in 2012-13 to form an 11-member West Central Conference. The exception will be Fall 2012, when Melrose operates as an independent.

An 11-member conference can be a headache for athletic directors...10 schools, that's not bad. In an 11-member scenario, it's possible that the WCC will have to be split up into north and south divisions as it has since 1989. With a five-school division, it creates a large need to find non-conference games, which can be difficult for a sport like basketball that has 26 available game nights per season.

A little background on LQPV...
After the schools of Madison, Marietta-Nassau, Appleton and Milan merged in 1991 to form the conglomerate Lac qui Parle Valley schools, they have remained a member of the West Central Conference for the past 21 years. In the 1990s, LQPV continuously put up very strong boys' and girls' varsity teams, especially in football, boys' basketball, volleyball and baseball.

Recently, LQPV's K-12 enrollment has tapered below 900 students, and a number of their athletic programs have failed to put out competitive varsity squads. The exceptions recently are wrestling and girls' tennis (both paired with Dawson-Boyd) as well as volleyball and fastpitch softball.

LQPV has flirted with leaving the WCC for a couple years, and over the winter that result came to fruition.

Two schools who are currently in the 13-member West Central Conference leave the league beginning next fall. They are New London-Spicer, heading to the Wright County Conference, and Albany, who's going to the Granite Ridge Conference. A third team leaves for the Fall 2013 season, LQPV.

Lac qui Parle Valley will become a member of the Camden North Conference in 2013. They will compete for conference titles with Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg, Renville County West, Central Minnesota Christian-Prinsburg, MACCRAY and Dawson-Boyd. Only MACCRAY has enrollment that approaches LQPV's size; the rest are considerably smaller.

From this week's Swift County Monitor of Benson:
Most of the WCC schools don't compete in all the sports offered by other league schools, so each sport will have conference or division schedules formed on a case-by-case basis. As an example, A-G-GC, BOLD, Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta, Melrose, Sauk Centre and Paynesville don't field boys' tennis teams. In that sport, the WCC will have only five schools. For girls' tennis, Sauk Centre, Melrose and MA/CA join the five schools who have boys' tennis to have an 8-member WCC.

For girls' and boys' basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball, all 10 members of the WCC in 2013-14 field teams, so the WCC will have 10 members in those cases.

For wrestling beginning in 2013-14, the WCC will have Yellow Medicine East, Montevideo, BOLD, A-C-GC, Paynesville Area, Sauk Centre/Melrose, Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta/Hancock, Minnewaska Area and Benson.