Schuckman: Time has come for WB6, Alleman to go separate ways

The Rock Island Alleman athletic department may finally have hit rock bottom, and it’s time for the Western Big 6 Conference to address it.

Last week, the Pioneers informed the remainder of the WB6 they would not be fielding a girls softball team this spring. Dwindling numbers saw less than nine players attend the first practice, according to the Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus, and the decision was made to forgo the season.

It’s a disheartening realization that a championship program no longer has enough student-athletes to field a team.

That’s the state of Alleman athletics these days.

Across the board, the Pioneers struggle to compete within the conference. Enrollment has dropped. The principal and athletic director both resigned during the winter. And competitively, Alleman is lagging far behind.

The football program went 0-9, was shut out seven times and allowed 54.3 points per game. The boys basketball team allowed 100 or more points twice in WB6 play. Other sports have struggled, and now softball cannot field a team.

This is a program with six state championships and nine state trophies to its credit since the 1984-85 school year. The most recent state championship came in 2014.

“We just didn’t have enough girls sign up,” Alleman interim athletic director Mike Tracey told the Dispatch/Argus. “Attendance was low at open workouts. We lost kids in the exodus of students from Alleman and some of those were softball players. We’ve also lost players that have decided to play for travel teams instead of choosing to play for the high school. It’s a variety of things.”

Tracey said Alleman plans to field a team in 2023.

“We’ve been saying that this is just a one-year glitch,” Tracey told the Dispatch/Argus. “We’ll be back to full strength next year, but it’s going to take some work and dedication from the kids, coaches and parents to make that happen. We were shocked that it happened, but it happened so now we plan on getting it back.”

If the Pioneers do come back next spring, how competitive will they be?

The rest of the WB6 — as well as the Alleman administration — needs to address this issue now.

The most prudent way to do that is to cut all ties.

Alleman is one of the conference’s six original members, but history and tradition have to be put on the backburner in this discussion. So does the league’s concern with football scheduling. The Pioneers are clearly in over their heads playing in a big-school conference.

The current enrollment range for the other seven schools goes from Geneseo at 849 to Moline at 2,083, according to the enrollment figures the Illinois High School Association uses for classifications. Alleman’s enrollment is listed as 421 on the IHSA website, but according to a November report from WQAD, the ABC affiliate in the Quad Cities, Alleman’s enrollment dropped to 292 at the beginning of this school year.

It’s a disparity that won’t be fixed overnight.

The Alleman student-athletes deserve the opportunity to compete on a level playing field, as do the other student-athletes within the WB6. Right now, it’s anything but fair and equitable for the Pioneers. No coach or administrator within the league wants to see Alleman get steamrolled game after game, but that’s what is happening.

As sad as it would be to see a breakup of the original six WB6 members, it needs to happen.

Alleman needs to find a new conference home, and if it balks, the WB6 needs to vote the Pioneers out. It would be the best thing for the league and the school in the long run.