The students in the Villa Grove and Heritage coop have formed strong friendships over the last six years.
“The friendships I have seen built with the students there with our students and parents working together through the teams and booster clubs has been so positive,” said Superintendent Tom Davis.
The Heritage and Villa Grove school boards met on Monday night to discuss the future of the coop and Davis said both boards indicated they were happy with the coop.
Davis said the coop, now in its sixth year, is a positive experience for Heritage students and he believes the positive goes beyond success on the athletic field.
Davis said the districts work together on projects, including record install ties for the Illinois Memorial Stadium field seat install each August, the students also sit together at sporting events and have built relationships that they would’t have had the chance to otherwise.
Davis said the coop is successful from an athletic standpoint as well with the football team going to the playoffs five of six years, teams winning multiple LOVC division and conference championship and playing in several regional championship games.
“Not to mention the number of student-athletes honored at the conference and local level for individual awards, including a couple of all-state candidates,” Davis said. “All I can say is I am just as proud to wear our red, white, silver, and navy on a volleyball hosting night as I am every Friday wearing the Villa Grove blue and yellow for football nights. “
Davis said he thinks the student support for the coop has led to the athletic teams being successful.
“Right now, we are looking forward to winter sports,” he said. “Our boys basketball has an experienced and winning team coming back under Corey White, our girls team has been in championship games for LOVC the past few years under Dan Sappenfield and is very competitive, and we have an awesome cheer squad made up of girls from both schools under coach Andrea Wolf, and they keep everyone cheering at VGH games.”
Davis said the only change he expected was some tweaks to the language in the cooperative agreement and those changes would be worked out between the superintendents of both schools, the administrations and athletic directors.
The coop currently sees both schools cooping football, boys basketball, girls basketball, cross country, golf, track and baseball.
Both schools maintain separate volleyball and softball programs.
Davis said the only possible change he would like to see in the coop in the future is the including of all sports.
“We have come close before, but with the schools entering a new conference, which will resemble the old LOVC, the enrollments indicate there will be strength in numbers and cooperating as opposed to being separate and near the bottom in enrollment,” he said.
“One negative has been that we also can end up intense rivals in sports that we do not co-op in like volleyball, but that is something that all schools that have partial co-ops experience, you are rivals one night, then can be teammates the next night or next season that comes along,” Davis said. “It pushes both teams to do their best, but I hope some day we are together in all sports to eliminate that rivalry, but only time will tell.”
