The Pride of Iowa Conference ((POI) ) is a high school athletic conference made up of small schools in southern Iowa.
History
The conference was founded in 1987 as with six small schools: I-35, Wayne, Central Decatur, Mt. Ayr, Southeast Warren, and East Union. For the first 13 years of its history, the conference was quite small and compact. The conference added Nodaway Valley and Martensdale-St. Mary's in 1997, two schools in the same relative area of the state. In 2000 and 2001, the conference underwent a two-year, four-team expansion that more than doubled the geographical area of the conference. Corning (formerly of the Rolling Hills Conference) and Bedford (Corner Conference) joined in 2000; with Lenox (Rolling Hills Conference) and Pleasantville (Heart of Iowa Conference) being added in 2001. The conference has remained stable since then and, although most of the schools are in Iowa's smallest class, 1A, the schools are not in financial or numerical trouble, especially when one considers that two very small Bluegrass Conference schools have been shut down in recent years and many of their former students have moved into POI schools. In the fall of 2013, Corning and Villisca (Corner Conference) became Southwest Valley High School remaining in the Pride of Iowa for all activities.