Waukegan High School made an announcement Mar. 4 stating their intentions to leave the Central Suburban League in favor of joining the North Suburban League.
An application for admission by Waukegan superintendent Dr. Donaldo Batiste was accepted Mar. 3, and the Bulldogs will officially have a new conference home for the 2016-17 athletic season.
“I think our community would like to be playing the schools that are in close proximity to us,” said Waukegan athletic director Sam Taylor to CSL Insider. “It creates natural rivalries and should be a little more exciting, and it will be a little easier to get to games.
Taylor is excited to learn about his school’s role in the North Suburan League.
“I look forward to that part of learning new ropes and having new challenges we aren’t used to. Coaches will have to learn some new ways because we knew the CSL very well. So that part is exciting as well.”
New Trier athletic director Randy Oberembt found the move more surprising than exciting.
“A few years ago Waukegan had informed the schools of the Central Suburban League that they were petitioning the North Suburban League for admittance into their conference, but they were denied. So we (the schools of the CSL) knew that Waukegan had thoughts of joining the NSL in the back of their mind, but whenever a team leaves a conference it always comes as a shock,” said Oberembt.
Waukegan has a long history of competition with teams from the CSL. The school originally joined the CSL in 1975 (the inaugural year of the CSL was 1965) as two schools, Waukegan East and Waukegan West. The two schools merged into Waukegan High School in 1989. 1975 was the first year of there being two schools in Waukegan School District 60.
But prior to the split of the original Waukegan High School (in 1975) the school competed in the old Suburban League (founded in 1913) which was one of the most powerful conferences in high school athletics in the Chicago area. The old conference had the likes of Proviso East and West (in Maywood and Hillside respectively), Oak Park-River Forrest, Lyons Township (La Grange) and of course Evanston and New Trier.
So when the Suburban League folded in 1975, it was only natural for Waukegan to join its natural geographic rivals (New Trier and Evanston) in the Central Suburban League.
Even though New Trier and Waukegan had been competing against each other since the 1910s, the Bulldogs still had the urge to switch conferences. They will be making the switch for the 2017 football season, thr same season the North Suburban League will be undergoing some major changes as well.
North Chicago, Antioch, Lakes, Round Lake, Grant, Wauconda, Grayslake North and Grayslake Central will all be forming their own conference that year. All of these schools were once part of the 14 school North Suburban Conference, which in 2017, will consist of Zion-Benton, Warren, Libertyville, Stevenson, Lake Forest, Lake Zurich, Mundelein, Vernon Hills, and now Waukegan.
Oberembt does not want to comment on the reasons why he thinks Waukegan left the CSL, but he speculates it was because of a geography issue. The closest school to Waukegan in the CSL is Highland Park, which is still a 40 minute drive, and when they come down to play New Trier, Evanston, any of the Maine Township schools, (East, South, and West), any of the Niles Township schools (West and North), bus rides can exceed over an hour, which is very far to go for a conference game in high school athletics. On top of that, Waukegan will have natural rivals with Warren and Zion-Beton being right in their neighborhood.
Once Waukegan left the CSL, president and Glenbrook North Athletic Director John Catalano told the Chicago Tribune that he expects to replace Waukegan with another school. Oberembt says that he the CSL is accepting bids from other schools and it does not expect to have an announcement on which school will be replacing the Bulldogs until the end of the school year.
New Trier athletes will certainly miss the competition that Waukegan provided. Football and basketball player Andrew Hauser offered an interesting perspective on the move.
“I’m going to miss their pep-band, it’s awesome,” he said. “By far the best band in the confeence, their mix of new and old songs combined with an energetic conductor makes for a band that is second to none in the CSL. I’m devastated to see them leave.”