The River Valley Conference is a high school athletic conference whose members are located in smaller communities in eastern Iowa. The conference roughly spans from the Iowa City metropolitan area to the southwest, to Bellevue in northeastern Jackson County on the northeast.
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Member schools
There are 13 full members of the River Valley Conference. Each of those schools are in Class 2A, Iowa's second smallest enrollment class.
Sports
The school fields athletic teams in 13 sports, including:
Although the member schools field freshman — and in some cases, junior varsity — teams in many of the above-mentioned sports, conference championships are determined at varsity levels only.
History
The River Valley Conference traces its history to 2008, when it was formed as the Cedar Valley Conference. That year, the seven original schools left the former Eastern Iowa Hawkeye Conference, which was dissolved. Four member schools from the old EIHC — Clear Creek-Amana, Mount Vernon, Solon and Williamsburg — were growing in size and placed in the WaMaC Conference. The seven remaining schools joined North Cedar High School, (which had been in the Big East Conference) in forming the new CVC.
Starting with the 2013-2014 school year, former Big East members Bellevue, Camanche and Northeast were placed in the CVC, along with Cascade and Monticello. The events that eventually resulted in the changes began in the early 2010s, when Camanche began petitioning to leave the Big East for the CVC, and CVC member schools denied them admission, citing travel distances. The Iowa Department of Education eventually was asked to help resolve the dilemma. Not all CVC athletic directors and coaches welcomed the Iowa Department of Education's decision, expressing concerns about travel distances, loss of classroom time and gate receipts for some contests.
As a result of the changes, the CVC was renamed the River Valley Conference.
In January 2017, Anamosa, a member of the WaMaC Conference, announced it would be joining the RVC, effective in 2018-2019, bringing the league to 14 schools.