NEW ULM– The Big South Conference and the newly-formed South Central Conference will see some changes to the face of their conferences in two years. Both St. James Area and Blue Earth Area will depart the Big South Conference and join the South Central Conference for the 2027-28 school year. St. James and Blue Earth will join Minnesota Valley Lutheran, Le Sueur-Henderson, Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial, Maple River, St. Clair and Sibley East.

St. James Athletic Director Jared Schwanz said that the move is a better fit for St. James.

“It is a better fit for schools our size,” he said. “We have less travel and it is something our coaches and our community wanted to make a change — that was the biggest thing.”

Schwanz said that there was discussion about St. James leaving the Big South Conference for a while.

“Ever since the old South Central Conference dissolved, there has always been talk,” he said. “It has been a tough spot for St. James to find a true home. And in the new South Central Conference, all of the enrollments are almost equal.”

Schwanz said that travel will be shorter.

“We won’t be traveling to Pipestone or Marshall on Tuesday or Thursday nights. Now our longest bus ride for a conference game will be an hour for our kids.”

Schwanz said that the South Central Conference has approached St. James before about joining.

“But it was never seriously talked about — we polled some coaches and the community. We had a community meeting and the majority of the feedback was positive.”

Schwanz said there was talk about seeking admission to the Valley Conference.

“That was brought up at some point, but that was before I was here that the Valley Conference had approached [St. James], but it was never a serious option.”

He said that the new conference does hurt some sports such as boys tennis, dance and gymnastics.

“We can’t have a true conference right now, but we are looking for a place for them within the next year or two of finding them a conference,” Schwanz said. “If not, they will compete and still be eligible for playoffs.”

Travis Armstrong, the Athletic Director at BEA, said there was always some community output about leaving the Big South Conference because of declining enrollment.

“And there is a lot of travel associated with the Big South Conference,” Armstrong said. “But there was not a viable option for us whether is was the Gopher or the Valley Conference — they already had their teams — so there was not an opening.”

He said that when the new South Central Conference formed, there were some rumblings that they were looking to add a couple of teams to make it eight teams for their conference.

“So I brought it up with my coaches and our school board and they thought that is was something we would entertain,” he said.

Like St. James, the road trips will be shorter.

“We are not going to Pipestone, Luverne or Redwood Falls,” he said. “Sibley East and Le Sueur will be our longest conference road trips, which are considerably shorter than those other ones. We still want to compete against Luverne and Pipestone — maybe one doubleheader in boys and girls basketball. They are our size school, but going up against the New Ulms, the St. Peters and the Wasecas with our enrollment declining is tough.

“So we were looking to find a conference with comparable enrollment which the South Central is — we are within 50 students of each other and all within an hour for everybody except Sibley East, which is a little longer.”

Armstrong said that Blue Earth will still compete with New Ulm in non-conference sports.

“We think that this move is the best for our district and for our kids,” he said. “Competition-wise and financially it is a good move. The other thing is everbody in this conference in a lot of our sports are our section opponents in basketball, baseball and softball. MVL, Le Sueur, Maple River, Lake Crystal — they are also our section opponents. If we did not play against them in a non-conference game, we did not have head-to-head matchups. But now with the head-to-head games that seeding will take care of itself.”

Two New Ulm schools who will see some affect by the change are MVL and New Ulm High School.

MVL Activities Director Craig Morgan said that the SCC initiated the invite to both schools.

“We looked at different schools who might be interested and have the same activities as we have or had activities that we may think about adding some day,” he said. “We felt those two schools might fit. We already play Blue Earth and St. James in girls basketball and volleyball, and we will just add them for baseball and softball. We played Blue Earth in boys basketball.”

New Ulm High School Activities Director Adam Neubarth said that the loss of St. James and Blue Earth Area will not have a big affect on New Ulm High School.

“They [St. James and BEA] are in the Gold [small school] division and we are in the black [big school] division, so the only way that it would affect us is is there is some sort of realignment where they pull a couple of teams from the black division and put them in the gold division,” Neubarth said. “We schedule them for tennis, gymnastics, basketball and volleyball, so I hope that relationship continues. We are hoping to keep them on our schedule as much as we can.”