GRANITE CITY – An athletic era in Granite City sports history is coming to a end.
Granite City’s school board voted unanimously in a Tuesday evening meeting to begin procedures to leave the Southwestern Conference following the 2017-18 school year.
“We elected to make a move to request withdrawing from the Southwestern Conference due to safety issues,” said Granite City school superintendent Jim Greenwald. “This is directed to the entire conference, not just one school,” Greenwald said, citing an incident during the Warriors’ SWC Feb. 21 boys basketball game at East St. Louis in which reports of a spectator with a gun prompted the suspension of the game before halftime and the clearing of the entire East St. Louis gym.
“We do not want to go in that direction any longer,” Greenwald said. “I sent a letter to all the superintendents (in the SWC) to meet with their principals and their athletic directors about setting up metal detectors like we have at Granite and they opted not to want to do this.
“Consequently, we will be in (the SWC) next year if they do grant this; we will be out the following year.”
The Warriors were a member of the SWC from its founding as the Southwest Conference in 1923; the league was reformed in 1934 as the Madison-St. Clair Conference and renamed Southwestern Conference in 1937. The Warriors, known as Granite City South at the time, withdrew from the SWC following the 1974-75 school year, playing as an independent until the 1979-80 school year when South, Granite City North, Edwardsville, Cahokia and Belleville Althoff formed the Gateway East Conference; the five-school league folded in 1983 after South and North had merged back into one Granite City High School, reducing the league to four schools.
The re-merged GCHS rejoined the SWC for the 1985-86 school year and had remained a member from that point; the Granite City withdrawal would reduce the league to seven teams, Alton, Belleville East, Belleville West, Collinsville, East St. Louis, Edwardsville and O’Fallon.
