Sidney to share baseball with East Mills, football, wrestling with Hamburg
Sidney’s baseball, football and wrestling teams are bringing in an additional school to share the sport for the upcoming season.
Sidney and East Mills will share baseball this summer while Sidney and Hamburg will share football this fall and boys and girls wrestling this winter.
The Sidney/Hamburg sharing agreements were approved during Sidney’s School Board meeting in April while the Sidney/East Mills sharing agreement was approved Monday, May 11, during Sidney’s monthly meeting.
Sidney Activities Director Aaron Lang said his district was approached by East Mills to share baseball this summer as the Wolverines were going to be a few players short of being able to field their own team.
“They didn’t have enough kids,” Lang said, “and they approached us about playing together. The agreement is pretty simple. We’ll be housed under the Sidney name, and our numbers are down a bit, so it makes sense for both of us.”
Lang estimates six to eight East Mills athletes will play for the Cowboys this summer. He added while the team will play most of their home games in Sidney, but they are looking to have at least one home date at East Mills.
The Sidney/East Mills sharing agreement is only expected to last this summer.
Lang estimates Hamburg has two to four athletes interested in playing football this fall and Hamburg officials were looking for a place for them to be able to play.
Lang said the interested Hamburg athletes were formally invited to play for Sidney earlier this month. He added while the two to four number is high school athletes, Hamburg has a few junior high athletes who will play football for Sidney as well.
Lang said wrestling is where the conversations started happening with Hamburg having three to five boys and one, possibly a couple more, girls wanting to compete.
“We were looking for things we can do to help each other out,” Lang said. “They have some boys and girls interested. The more numbers you have the more you can do for JV and practices in football and in wrestling, that’s more practice partners and the more numbers you have the better chance you have of filling a lineup.”
Sidney and Fremont-Mills have shared wrestling for several years as Southwest Iowa. That agreement continues and they’ll continue to be known as Southwest Iowa with Hamburg included this winter.
Lang said with the better numbers, that adds excitement for the sports involved.
The Sidney/Hamburg sharing agreements are for the upcoming season and they’ll see how things go and reevaluate after the season is over.
