Nevada High School would be good fit for Big 8 Conference

Hello. Is anyone out there listening?

This is Nevada calling. Hello.

And so it goes as the Nevada High School Tigers are left twisting in the breeze thanks to some underhanded treachery by the Carthage Tigers, who didn't let conference ties dating back 85 or so years with Nevada stand in their way.

Carthage wanted out, plain and simple. Everone knew the Webb City Cardinals would follow suit.

None of what has happened is Nevada's fault. Make no mistake about it. The best thing for Nevada would be getting into the Big 8 Conference, of which they were a member long before the current Southwest Conference was ever thought of. That's what makes this thing all so hard to fathom.

If Nevada used to be a viable member of a conference that used to include such places as Aurora, Monett, Mount Vernon and Cassville. Why are we so unpalatable to them now? "Distance," they scream.

Well, very few people used to gripe about trips to Monett back when the roads were narrow and twisting. Yet now, it is a big deal. And heck, it's one lousy trip a year in either football or basketball.

So, what?

I can't believe so many of them are so worked up about this travel thing. The longest trip we have is the one to McDonald County, which we've been making for years.

About the only allowance they make for those games is they schedule them on Fridays instead of Tuesdays. It's a stupid hour and a half and nobody's lost any sleep because of it yet.

The only thing I don't like is their awful icy weather down there. And its theirs, not ours. I don't know how many times I've seen a curtain descend at about the I-44 line where everything south is socked in.

About the worst thing I could imagine would be going independent where you having nothing to achieve athletically unless you win district. I think Nevada athletic director Kevin McKinley would want to pull his hair out attempting to schedule games from scratch every year.

And I would think that even if the Big 8 doesn't want Nevada, somebody would take us in somewhere. But we haven't reached that point yet because the Big 8 has yet to say they won't accept us.

Nevada was a charter member of what was originally known as the Southwest Big 8 Conference. Other members were: Lamar, Aurora, Mount Vernon, Monett, Carthage, Webb City and Neosho.

And thus it remained until 1954 when Cassville was admitted and it became the Big 9. Another decade passed and Carl Junction came in, making it the Big 10. This was a cozy setup and remained so until an ad hoc committee of the state forced them to admit Seneca, East Newton and McDonald County, none of which had a conference affiliation.

The conference was unable to operate under the huge umbrella and split up into the two conferences, leaving us where we are at present.

Since the conference operated so well with 10 schools in the past, I can't for the life of me see why they couldn't do so again.

Before the administrators make their decision on what to do with schools like Nevada and McDonald County, maybe they ought to sit down and think for moment.

They are in the kid business, plain and simple. If you turn your back on the kids of another community, you would do the same thing if you went somewhere else. In the end game, all the kids count. Not just the ones from a particular school. They are all in this thing together.

That's what they apparently forgot at Carthage.