Northwest R-1 School District middle schoolers will have the chance to play more sports next school year.
The district has two middle schools – Woodridge Middle School in High Ridge and Valley Middle School in House Springs – which together enroll 1,404 students in grades six through eight.
Right now, all of the district’s middle school students may play intramural sports, but next year the seventh- and eighth-graders will get to play other schools in several new sports – girls volleyball, boys soccer and both boys and girls basketball programs.
“Intramurals just stay within the walls of our school building. This gives us an opportunity to engage in activity with other schools from the Jefferson County area,” district activities director Jeff Taggart said.
The district already has a middle school cross country program, but currently only seventh- and eighth-graders may participate on their schools’ cross country teams. However, Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHAA) has changed the rules for those teams, and sixth-graders will be able to be part of those teams next school year, Taggart said.
“I think (the new and expanded sports programs) are going to generate more student involvement, more school spirit,” Taggart said. “You cultivate that at a younger age and it just grows and grows and by the time they get to us at high school, they’ve already kind of experienced what it’s like and what it takes to be a Northwest Lion.”
The Board of Education voted unanimously Feb. 22 to add the new sports programs.
Start-up expenses for the programs will be $44,620.35 and the yearly cost will be $43,352, according to school board documents.
Start-up expenses will cover uniforms and equipment, and yearly expenses will include officials, transportation, coaches and workers, Taggart said.
Taggart said tryouts will be held for each team, but as of Monday, at Leader deadline, dates had not been set.
“First practices I believe will be around August 15 for girls volleyball, and boys soccer start dates are going to be around that time, but it’s undetermined yet,” he said.
“The schedules are set for boys and girls basketball. They have eight to nine games each. We will have a good little middle school season, and the excitement’s already buzzing.”
Taggart said the Northwest middle schoolers already have games scheduled against Windsor, Crystal City, Festus, Grandview, De Soto, Hillsboro, Jefferson R-7 and Perryville.
Taggart said he hopes the middle school sports program helps build the high school sports programs.
“It just gives us a couple of more years to kind of instill in them what we expect of a Northwest athlete from a young age all the way to the time that they graduate high school,” he said.
Taggart said sports is a safe space for students to learn hard life lessons, like failure and moving on from failure.
“This is the safest place that we’re going to be able to provide our kids with the opportunity to see all the positives and some things that life will throw at them down the road,” he said.
Taggart said he is excited to see it start next school year.
“It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. The kids are really going to appreciate the opportunities they have been given, and it’s just going to build more and more character,” he said.