After Crystal City announced in September its intentions of leaving the league next year, officials moved swiftly to fill the void by adding Bayless to the conference.
Jefferson athletic director Jason Dreyer said a two-year contract was signed between Bayless and the league and the Bronchos will begin play in 2020.
“There’s been talk with them the last couple of years,” Dreyer said on Friday. “We felt like they are a great addition because they are a similar size.”
Bayless will be the only Class 3 school in the football-only conference. St. Vincent and Valle Catholic are in Class 1 and Grandview, Herculaneum, Jefferson and St. Pius X are in Class 2.
The Bronchos have played St. Pius X, Valle and Windsor the past two seasons, losing all six games. Bayless has only been playing varsity football for two seasons. If the Bronchos forfeit games against league teams, the school will have to pay a fee for each game missed, Dreyer said.
“With the position the conference teams were put in having to reschedule the Crystal City game, this was a best-case scenario,” Dreyer said.
Another major benefit to adding Bayless, which is located in south St. Louis right off I-55, is it has a junior varsity program. Crystal City hasn’t been able to field a JV team for years, so the other schools in the conference have had to work around that hole in the schedule as well.
“It’s a great thing for our conference,” Jefferson head coach Alex Rouggly said. “It allows them to slide into Crystal City’s spot, which is a great thing. They have a solidified JV which helps out from the standpoint for us not having a bye week. That’s a big deal for our youngsters to play competitive football on Monday.”
St. Vincent is the team farthest south in the I-55 and will have to travel about 75 miles one way to play the Bronchos. However, Bayless was likely the only viable option to take the Hornets’ spot.
Eric Lawrence was an assistant football coach at St. Pius until leaving this year to become the athletic director at Bayless. Undoubtedly, the familiarity Lawrence had with the other schools in the I-55 helped speed the process along. Lawrence said adding Bayless had been talked about before and when Crystal City dropped out, the move came rapidly.
“I think it provides our football team some consistency on who we’re playing instead of scrambling for teams to play and it gives our kids a chance to be recognized for all-conference teams,” Lawrence said.
Crystal City departed the league because it found it could no longer compete with the other teams. The number of boys coming out for football in Glasstown has been dropping for years. Losing by the mercy rule became common in league games. The Hornets are trying to map out a schedule that includes as many Class 1 schools as they can find. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of unaffiliated teams that size in the region.
With a school enrollment of over 500, Bayless had 39 students go out for football this year. Injuries have culled that number to 31, but it hasn’t impacted the ability to field competitive squads on both levels. The Bronchos’ nonconference schedule this fall included Brentwood, Crystal City and Windsor.
Lawrence said joining the I-55 isn’t just a quick fix for both parties.
“Both sides see it as something that will continue on past the two years,” he said.
Herculaneum head coach Cody Hunter said he approves of the addition of Bayless, but said the departure of his school’s closest rival is not a positive.
Hunter and Crystal City head coach Dan Fox are close friends. They’ve coached together at Hillsboro and have known each other for years. Hunter and Fox were hired for their jobs about the same time last year.
“We are disappointed that Crystal’s leaving,” Hunter said. “I understand it completely because Dan’s got one of the hardest jobs in the state. Herky and Crystal have played forever and I’m upset that competition isn’t there anymore. It’s always been a good community game. I don’t blame anybody for it, but I don’t like it.”
Some freshmen at Crystal City who might have gone out for the football team chose not to because they knew they’d be thrown into the varsity deep end.
“Dan’s trying to turn that program around but he doesn’t have a lot to work with,” Hunter said. “Mikey Moloney (Herculaneum linebacker) is a freshman but he’s a little different. If you put freshmen in, they might get hurt.”
Replacing Crystal City with Bayless doesn’t address the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to competition in the I-55. Valle routinely beats the other teams in the conference by the mercy rule and often isn’t even playing their first string in the second half.
But do you kick out the Warriors just because they’re so much better than the rest of the league’s teams? None of the coaches I’ve talked to are willing to take that radical of an approach. St. Pius travels to Ste. Genevieve on Friday to play Valle for the I-55 championship.
There’s a cemetery at one end of the Warriors’ home field. The Lancers can bury that notion of invincibility with one upset victory.