Little 7 Conference

The Little 7 Conference was a high school athletic conference in Illinois. It was officially organized in October 1921 for 1921–1922 school year.
The first officially sanctioned sport was basketball, with the first game in December 1921 between Batavia and Sycamore. The first track meet was at St. Charles, won by Wheaton, led by Harold E. "Red" Grange in his senior year. The first officially sanctioned football season was fall 1922.

Little 7 Conference (1921–1995)

The beginning

The seven founding members of the Little 7 Conference were:

High School	LSC Duration	Next Conference	Current Conference
Batavia High School	1921–1995	Suburban Prairie Conference	DuKane Conference
Dundee High School	1921–1957	North Suburban Conference	Fox Valley Conference
Geneva Community High School	1921–1995	Suburban Prairie Conference	DuKane Conference
Naperville High School	1921–1963	Upstate Eight Conference	DuPage Valley Conference
St. Charles High School	1921–1963	Upstate Eight Conference	DuKane Conference
Sycamore High School	1921–1995	Suburban Prairie Conference	Interstate Eight Conference
Wheaton High School	1921–1959	N/A	DuKane Conference

With the exception of Sycamore, the other six charter members were previously partners in the Bi-County League, 1917–1919. However, the schools did not like the set-up for the league and went their separate ways.
Two years later, the group of six would try again.
Naperville and Wheaton left the DuPage County League to join former Kane County Conference members Batavia, Dundee, Geneva and St. Charles to form a new league. Sycamore entered the conference, but it's unknown what league the Spartans left behind, if any.
Wheaton changed its name to Wheaton Community High School in 1925 and dropped out of the league in 1930. The Tiger program returned a few years later, but the return date is not officially known.
Batavia dropped its football program in 1934, but after three years, the Bulldogs returned to the gridiron.
After 13 school years in the West Suburban Conference, West Chicago High School departed to join the Little 7 in 1936. “WeGo” previously held conference rivalries before as part of the Bi-County League during World War I. The addition to league was the first in the conference's history and it created an 8-team conference, yet at times in the 1940s, the Wildcats dropped their football program.
Throughout the life of the conference, the league fluctuated between seven and eight teams, but the name was never changed due to the fact when there were eight teams in the league, schools always had seven opponents.

Urban sprawl and change

Nearly, two decades of stability kept the Little 7 Conference motoring along. However that began to change in the mid 1950s. Suburban sprawl begin to push west from Chicago and with expressways making travel easier to downtown Chicago, more residents were beginning to move into LSC territory. The next two decades would see 13 different schools either join or leave the conference.
Wheaton ended conference play in football and basketball in 1955. Match-ups continued but were considered non-conference affairs.
On October 9, 1956, Dundee High School submitted a request to leave the conference. The school would become the first charter member to leave the conference after the 1956-57 school year. Dundee became a charter member of the newly formed North Suburban Conference.
The conference filled the opening a year later with the admission of Mooseheart High School in 1958. The league returned to eight teams. But after much speculation, Wheaton officially departed the league in all sports in 1959.
Belvidere High School jumped at the chance to get in the Little 7 in 1959. Applying for membership at least five years earlier, The Bucs were welcomed for a brief stint in the LSC.
With enrollment growing, Naperville sought a conference with similar numbers. In the spring of 1963, the Redskin program departed for the brand new Upstate Eight Conference. Belvidere would also leave the conference with Naperville.
In the fall of that year, two new additions to the Little 7 were Kaneland and Oswego. Kaneland High School, based in Maple Park, joined up from the smaller after just five school years and Oswego High School left the Fox Valley Conference to join the Little 7.
St. Charles was beginning to feel the added enrollment and was forced to find a conference that kept the Saints on a similar playing field. In the fall of 1965, St. Charles left their rivals to the south, Batavia and Geneva, behind and joined the Upstate Eight Conference after 44 seasons in the Little 7.
That fall, Plainfield High School filled the void left by St. Charles by joining the Little 7 from the Fox Valley Conference. Mooseheart departed after nine school years in the conference for the now-defunct Little 10 Conference.
In the fall of 1967, Cary-Grove High School joined the Little 7 from the Tri-County Conference and participated for six school years before departing for the Northwest Suburban Conference.
With Morris Community High School joining the Little 7 Conference in the fall of 1973, intense football rivalries jumped a notch thanks to the historic Redskin program. It also, forced the dissolution of the Illinois Valley Conference.
In 1975, West Chicago bolted after 39 years for the newly formed DuPage Valley Conference. The Wildcats won their only football state championship in their final season in the Little 7, but has struggled to keep up with the powerful DVC, only finishing above.500 once since 1982. Since 2000, “WeGo” officials have formally explored their way out of the league twice. The school finally made the move out of the DVC for the Upstate Eight Conference in 2013. The Wildcats now compete in the same division with old rivals Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles East.
In the fall, the league added Waubonsie Valley High School. Waubonsie was a newly built school in Aurora and it kept the league at eight teams. With the addition of the Warriors, the Little 7 would not have any movement for 16 years.
Waubonsie Valley began to dominate in most sports thanks to a massive surge in enrollment. It forced the Warrior program to leave the Little 7 for the Upstate Eight Conference in 1991. The school district would eventually split twice and now has 3 high schools in Aurora–Naperville-based district.
In the fall of that year, two teams were added to help fill the void left behind by the Warriors. Minooka High School bolted the now-defunct Northeast Conference to help deal with a local population surge and to pair up with natural rivalries with Morris, Oswego and Plainfield. Yorkville High School, feeling its own enrollment growth, joined the LSC from the Interstate Eight Conference.

End of an era

The final alignment of the league is shown below with only Batavia, Geneva, and Sycamore as members for the entire history of the conference.

1994–95 - Final Alignment	Joined	Next Conference	Current Conference
Batavia High School	1921	Suburban Prairie Conference	DuKane Conference
Geneva Community High School	1921	Suburban Prairie Conference	DuKane Conference
Kaneland High School	1963	Suburban Prairie Conference	Interstate Eight Conference
Minooka High School	1991	Suburban Prairie Conference	Southwest Prairie Conference
Morris Community High School	1973	Suburban Prairie Conference	Interstate Eight Conference
Oswego High School	1963	Suburban Prairie Conference	Southwest Prairie Conference
Plainfield High School	1965	Suburban Prairie Conference	Southwest Prairie Conference
Sycamore High School	1921	Suburban Prairie Conference	Interstate Eight Conference
Yorkville High School	1991	Suburban Prairie Conference	Southwest Prairie Conference

As the schools searched for ways to stay together and hold onto long-time rivalries, it was evident to all parties that the enrollment disparity between the nine schools would be problematic. The solution was to expand and split divisions, ending the tradition of the Little 7 Conference.
In 1995, the members of the Southwest Suburban Conference – Elmwood Park, Evergreen Park, Lemont, Ridgewood, Riverside-Brookfield and Westmont – and Fenton joined up with the Little 7 Conference to form the eventual 17-team super league, the Suburban Prairie Conference.
The conference ultimately failed. In May 1995, Kaneland junior Josh Faber expressed some doubts to the Chicago Tribune.
"I don't know what to expect. Some of the teams I've never even heard of. I wished we kept the Little Seven or …where other small schools like Burlington Central are. The distance is going to be a pain. I'm not looking forward to hour bus rides."
With divisions based on enrollment and not geography, the camaraderie that the Little 7 enjoyed struggled to take hold in the new SPC. Travel from Sycamore to Riverside-Brookfield was an example of why the league didn't work. A trip from one end to the other of the conference for a weekday afternoon contest was difficult. As the league struggled to return to a geographic based set up, conference officials found an old problem.
The years following the disbandment of the Little 7, Plainfield would split into four different high schools. Oswego would split and add Oswego East. Minooka's enrollment soared, while Morris's shrank. Geneva and Batavia would experience growth, but Yorkville and Kaneland did not get the expected bump in enrollment. In 2005, the SPC would split into 3 different leagues.