School board votes to discontinue golf, track sharing with G-R

GRUNDY CENTER – At last week’s regularly scheduled Grundy Center school board meeting, board members voted to end several sharing agreements with Gladbrook-Reinbeck, including golf and track sharing for both boys and girls. The board also voted to end the wrestling sharing agreement with G-R and North Tama.
At least one decision, the decision to end golf sharing, was mutual between the two schools, as the G-R school board had already voted to end it at their May meeting.
The decision to end track sharing, though, was not brought up to G-R before the April 30 deadline for deciding which sports will be shared between schools. The reason for this, according to Athletic Director Rollie Ackerman, is that he and the coaches did not want to make a decision on renewing the track sharing until after the season had ended.
In his activity sharing recommendation for the 2016-2017 school year, Ackerman recommended that the board renew the sharing of wrestling between GR-NT-GC for one more year to be reviewed annually, renew spring sports sharing between GR and GC for boys and girls tennis and soccer, no longer share boys and girls golf, and no longer share boys and girls track.
In his recommendation letter, Ackerman stated: “While sharing of the high school track brought about many positives including a second place finish for the boys of NICL West, five boys events and four girls event state qualifiers, as per conversations with the coaching staff at Grundy Center, the coaches recommend we no longer share high school boys and girls track.”
For the full story, see the June 23 edition of The Grundy Register.