Council Bluffs, IA

With the collapse of the Midwest Football Conference just three seasons after the start of the Iowa Western Football program, the Reivers have had plenty of holes to fill on their yearly schedules.  Now 13 seasons in and with Covid-19 playing havoc with the previous agreement between the ICCAC (Iowa) and the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference it's another season of firsts for IWCC when it comes to opponents.  Saturday at Titan Stadium will be the first 'first' of the Fall of 2021.  

ASA-Miami comes to town to face third-ranked Iowa Western, but it's far from the first 'first' of 2021.  The Reivers played Northeastern Oklahoma A&M and Southern Shreveport during their eight-game spring season (their first in program history) and will play Air Force Prep and McDougle Tech later this season.

"It's always exciting playing new teams," said Head Coach Scott Strohmeier, "Neither team is familiar with schemes and personnel.  Honestly, it sure beats having to play teams twice during the regular season."

The Reivers square off with ICCAC foes Iowa Central and Ellsworth twice this fall, marking the third time in the Reivers history that they'll play the two teams twice in the regular season.  When the football program was announced, IWCC made the 10th team in the MFC, splitting the conference into two, 5-team divisions.  However, before the Reivers played a down of football, North Iowa Area (Coach Strohmeier's former team) discontinued their program.  In 2009, the Reivers played nine teams for the first time, with two of the games played against teams that also ceased to exist after the season.  Rock Valley (IL), a conference opponent, folded their program after the conclusion of the season, while the lone non-conference opponent closed their college completely.  Dana College in Blair, Nebraska shuttered its doors after the conclusion of the 2010 school year. 

The next season, IWCC had games on the conference slate against Iowa Central, Ellsworth, North Dakota State College of Science, Harper, Joliet, DuPage and Grand Rapids, teams that they'd faced the year before, but 2010 saw the Reivers first competition from the Jayhawk Conference when they opened with a win at home against Highland and followed that with another home win against Dakota College-Bottineau.  The Lumberjacks recently discontinued their program after trying to make a go of it for nearly a decade.  The first bowl game in program history also came in the 2010 season, matching the Reivers up again with another first-time opponent, the Western Football Conference's Snow College Badgers.  The Western Football Conference has also folded since that matchup, leaving Snow playing as an independent.

2011 would see nearly an identical regular-season schedule for the program, playing Highland and Dakota College-Bottineau before running through the seven-game conference schedule.  The Reivers would match up against the only new opponent of the season in their first appearance in the Graphic Edge Bowl on November 20th when they shut out Rochester Community and Technical College, 62-0.  Following the conclusion of the 2011 season, Harper, Joliet, and Grand Rapids would shutter their football programs, leaving only DuPage remaining from the MFC's eastern division.

With the absence of three more conference opponents, the Reivers had to get creative in 2012.  The team traveled to Colorado for the first two games of the season and then to Texas for the third.  APU-Cole, a non-member school, slapped a team together as the Reivers demolished them in game one before meeting New Mexico Military Institute in a neutral site trio of games in Pueblo, Colorado.  Iowa Central, Ellsworth, and Iowa Western all traveled to face off against teams from the west in what was to be an annual event but the 'annual' part of the plan never materialized.  The last leg of their grueling three-game grind to start the season took the team to Athens, Texas for the inaugural 'Battle in the Valley' against Trinity Valley.  That event has turned into a yearly game for the Cardinals, with Iowa Western playing in and winning the first two iterations.  Home games followed against first-time opponents Georgia Military and Arkansas Baptist before the season finished with IWCC's first appearance in the NJCAA National Championship game against perennial power Butler out of the KJCCC.

2013 saw just as much travel for Coach Strohmeier's squad, but not a single new opponent.  In addition to playing Ellsworth and Iowa Central twice during the regular season, the team ventured to Athens, Texas again and also played games in Little Rock, Arkansas and Milledgeville, Georgia to play Arkansas Baptist and Georgia Military.  Even the bowl game yielded a familiar opponent as the Reivers and Grizzlies of Butler played again in the Graphic Edge Bowl, a 6-0 IWCC victory (the lowest point total for the Reivers in a win).

An agreement before the 2014 season led to some consistency on the schedule.  The ICCAC and KJCCC agreed to bring their two conferences together to form an alliance to ease scheduling for their respective schools.  Instead of the Jayhawk only scheduling seven conference and one non-conference game, with the top half making a playoff, they would schedule 10 games with no playoff.  While the ICCAC would no longer have to play each other twice and still fill 5-6 non-conference games.  That meant Iowa Western would have six first-time opponents during the season.  Coffeyville, Dodge City, Ft. Scott, Garden City, Hutchinson and Independence would all meet the Reivers for the first time in 2014.  IWCC battled through the gauntlet to a perfect record and another appearance in the NJCAA Championship Game, this time facing East Mississippi in the Mississippi Bowl in Biloxi.

The consistency in the schedule was exciting for the team, but it meant no new opponents during the regular season in 2015 as the coaching staff decided that a bye week was more than necessary against the competition that the Jayhawk brought with it week after week.  Even the bowl game saw a familiar foe as Georgia Military played the Reivers in that season's Graphic Edge Bowl.

A decision by the KJCCC affected the Reivers 2016 slate as opening week opponent Independence was prevented from facing the Reivers as 'punishment' from team infractions the year before.  So, as he has done so many times, Coach Strohmeier got creative, contacting old friend Tom Minnick and Arizona Western for a neutral site showdown in Grand Junction, Colorado.  The two teams played in Stocker Stadium, which shares a press box with Suplizio Field, the home of the JUCO World Series.  The Reivers would round out the year by hosting Holmes College of out Mississippi in Cedar Falls at the Graphic Edge Bowl.

2017 would end much the same way as 2016, with IWCC hosting an MACJC opponent.  This time against the Rangers of Northwest Mississippi, the only first-time opponent of the season.  

Ten years of Reiver Football began in 2018 and it marked only the third time the team hadn't met a new opponent in the program's history.  Another year of the scheduling agreement with the KJCCC meant more consistency in 2018, with IWCC hosting Snow at the GE Bowl to conclude the season, allowing the Reivers to even their record against the Badgers with a win.  Even as Arizona Western continued to hover near the top of the rankings, a large portion of the teams on their schedule called it quits as the Maricopa County Community Colleges eliminated football.  AWC and Eastern Arizona soon followed, meaning there were now six fewer teams in JUCO football for the Reivers to compete against.

In desperate need of games, Snow found themselves on the Reivers non-conference schedule in 2019, but it was Hinds out of Mississippi that would be the lone newcomer to the opponent's list in 2019.  The Reivers capped the season with their eighth straight victory as they topped the Bulldogs inside the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls.  The season would be the final time in the initial ICCAC/KJCCC agreement that the two conferences would play against each other as a whole in the regular season.

COVID-19 played a large part in the (temporary?) termination of the two conferences coming together as the 2020 season was delayed until this past spring.  Instead of 10 known teams on the schedule, the Reivers had to scramble to put together an eight-game abbreviated schedule.  Iowa Central and Ellsworth were penciled in for a home and away, while Snow and Arkansas Baptist returned as well.  Northeastern Oklahoma A&M, traditionally an outlying member of the Southwest Junior College Football Conference welcomed IWCC to Miami for a much-anticipated showdown, while JUCO newcomer Southern University-Shreveport traveled to Council Bluffs for the first-ever meeting between the teams.

Overall, the Reivers are 24-8 in the first match-up with an opponent, which includes a four-game winning streak dating back to December of 2017 when they topped Northwest Mississippi.  Of the 32 all-time opponents the program has faced, eight no longer field a football team.  ASA-Miami is the third of four NJCAA D-1 Independents that IWCC will have faced, leaving only Hocking College remaining on the list.  In addition to Hocking, 17 D-1 opponents remain that have never matched up with Iowa Western, that includes five from the Southwest Junior College Football Conference and 10 from the Mississippi Association.  Both Lackawanna and Monroe field D-1 teams from the Northeast Football Conference, leaving the pair from the eastern U.S. as the other two outliers at that level.

Only 39 teams remain at the NJCAA's Division One level, meaning more neutral site games or long road trips are in the future until more teams decide that the commitment to bringing football back or beginning a program is worth taking a chance.  Until then, welcome to Council Bluffs, ASA-Miami.

HOW DID THEY FARE?  ALL-TIME RECORD VS 1ST TIME OPPONENT

~Conference *Bowl Game ^Regular Season Neutral Site

NOTES

The Reivers will celebrate Homecoming 2021 during Saturday's game at Lewis Central High School.  This year's Hall of Fame inductees are former Reiver Baseball player Joe Bisenius and longtime supporter and Iowa House of Representative member Brent Siegrist.

The FREE Tailgate begins at approximately 11:30 in the LC Middle School parking lot (LEFT OF ENTRANCE GATES) with food and drinks provided by Matt Johnson and his crew from Barley's (support him after the game at 114 W Broadway, Council Bluffs, IA 51503)

The game will be broadcast on Iowa Western's 100,000 watt, FM radio station, 89.7 the River with live video streaming available on the Reiver Sports Network.