Storm Lake, St. Mary’s to share sports, Storm Lake joins Siouxland Conference

Storm Lake and St. Mary’s will share all sports beginning this fall, and Storm Lake is leaving the Lakes Conference after 101 years for the Siouxland Conference. The change ties two Buena Vista County schools together in the same athletic structure while ending one of the longest conference affiliations in northwest Iowa.

The move matters most where numbers are tight. Storm Lake St. Mary’s boys golf had only two golfers on its roster in one recent season, too few to compete for team scoring in meets. That is the kind of roster problem shared sports are meant to solve, especially for smaller programs that can struggle to field full lineups, schedule consistent practices and keep seasons viable for student-athletes.

St. Mary’s has already used shared arrangements in at least one sport. A separate report noted the school’s softball program was sharing with Remsen-St. Mary’s, a sign that the broader all-sports agreement builds on an existing model rather than starting from scratch. For players, that can mean new teammates, new opponents and a different daily routine; for parents, it means new schedules and travel patterns as the schools move from separate traditions to one combined system.

The conference shift has been building for more than a year. KCAU 9 reported on Jan. 9, 2025 that six schools were set to join the Siouxland Conference in the 2026-27 academic year, and a joint press release named Spencer, Storm Lake, Cherokee and Estherville-Lincoln Central among the schools involved. On Jan. 16, 2025, the Estherville News said the Lakes Conference would be no more on Aug. 1, 2026 after Estherville Lincoln Central accepted its invitation to join. Storm Lake High School’s athletics page still referenced the 2025 Lakes Conference Champions, underscoring how long that identity had shaped the school.

For Buena Vista County, the new setup redraws the local sports map in a very visible way. Storm Lake will face a new conference field while sharing all sports with St. Mary’s, and the county’s athletes will spend the fall in a structure built to preserve programs that might otherwise be too thin to sustain on their own.