Mount Vernon and Plankinton join forces

The South Dakota High School Activities Association finalized on Monday the co-op between Mount Vernon and Plankinton.

Due to the two-year scheduling for football, the schools will not join on the gridiron until the fall of 2013.

All other sports will join forces for the upcoming school year and will be nicknamed the Titans. The cooperative’s colors will be blue, silver and black.

“It think it was inevitable,” Plankinton head boys’ basketball coach Bob Sprang said. “Mount Vernon has been able to hold their own, but Plankinton has been down in numbers and it will certainly help.”

Eric Denning, Mount Vernon’s head basketball coach and athletic director, said the direction that the state was heading in made the decision an obvious one.

“It’s harder for one school to make a go of it by themselves,” he said.

The administrations now must figure out who the coaching staffs will be for the new teams. Both sides have their own head coaches and many could be losing their positions.

“I’m not really sure how that is all going to play out,” Denning said. “To be honest with you, the bigger issue is finding enough coaches with the number’s we’re going to have.”

Denning and Sprang both said they are unsure how the process is going to work. They may find themselves reapplying to the schools in order to coach teams.

“The administrations are going to take the bull by the horns and start the application process,” Denning said. “We haven’t done anything with that process yet.”

The transition is not always an easy one, but the two communities are not completely unfamiliar with competing together.

“The co-op already exists in wrestling, so it’s not that we don’t know each other,” Sprang said.

“The kids just adapt and most of our kids are looking at how things are going to mesh,” Denning said. “There is an adjustment factor, but all in all I think the kids handle it better than the adults.”

Tags: mount vernon, sports, updates, plankinton