Raiders embrace challenges playing in Central State Eight Conference provide

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QUINCY — The Quincy Notre Dame football team isn’t going to be intimidated.

History is proof of that.

The Raiders are in a conference this season for the first time since 2012, having joined the Central State Eight Conference as a football-only member and will compete in the league’s West Division alongside the four Springfield schools and Jacksonville.

QND is the smallest school in its division by a considerable margin — 504 students to be exact — but the Raiders are confident they will rise to the challenge.

“Every school is bigger than us,” senior lineman Ryan Darnell said. “So we need everybody at their best.”

When that is the case, the Raiders have been known to succeed.

From 2006 to 2012, QND was part of the Mid-State 6 Conference with schools ranging in enrollment from Peoria Richwoods at 1,500 students to Chillicothe IVC at 700 students. QND won two league championships and was the runner-up the other five seasons.

In the spring of 2021, when schools played a six-game season brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, QND played in the Big 12 Conference and made it to the league title game.

“It tests our mettle week in and week out,” QND coach Jack Cornell said of playing in a bigger conference. “I always think back to that spring COVID season and playing in the Big 12 Conference and every week was a challenging week. Every game was competitive and every game was a down-to-the-last-play type of game.”

Those games prepare teams for the playoffs.

“We want to have that challenge,” Darnell said. “We want to have played a good schedule going into the postseason so that we’re ready for anybody.”

The Raiders certainly will do that.

Their two non-conference games are against Quincy High School, which went 11-1 last season and reached the Class 7A state quarterfinals, and Richmond-Burton, which has been to the Class 4A playoffs every season since 2007.

Then comes the CS8 gauntlet, starting with the five division games. That includes playing host to Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin in Week 4. The Cyclones have won six state titles and finished as the state runner-up three times in the past two decades.

QND closes the season with cross-divisional games against CS8 opponents Lincoln and Decatur MacArthur, both of which made the playoffs last season.

While this team will benefit from playing a loaded schedule, future QND teams will benefit from playing consistent underclass games and building rivalries with league opponents.

“It definitely tells us what to expect,” QND linebacker Taylin Scott said. “In the years to come, we’re going to know what we’re going up against. That’s going to be helpful for this team in the future.”