Heartland Community School Website Release
Heartland Community Schools and Hampton Public Schools have officially entered into a cooperative sponsorship agreement for the coming two years. The Hampton Board of Education approved the tentative agreement on Monday, February 10th. The Heartland Board of Education approved the same tentative agreement on Wednesday, February 12th. The agreement covers all sports – boys, girls, high school, and junior high. Cheerleading is also included in the agreement. High school football is the one unique sport in the agreement, and high school football will not begin to co-op until the fall of 2026 (after the coming 2025 fall season). All other sports will be organized on a cooperatively sponsored basis starting this coming fall.
The NSAA limits the length of cooperative sponsorship agreements, with most agreements running for two years at a time. While cooperative sponsorship agreements are generally entered into for 2-year terms, the boards of both districts approached this agreement with the intent of creating a successful, long-term partnership that runs long past the initial two-year agreement. The boards of both districts believe that our schools and our communities were a very good fit for each other in terms of working and partnering together.
Our intent within the combined athletics programs will be to provide all of our student-athletes with vibrant and robust programs to be a part of. The combination of people, facilities, and resources between our two schools will ultimately benefit our students and the needs of our athletic programs. The first major step to complete now will be the selection of coaches for the various coaching staffs. The work on that front will begin in the next few weeks starting with fall-season coaching staffs.
The cooperatively sponsored teams will compete under the team name H&H. The teams’ colors will be black, white, and silver. A team mascot has not yet been selected, but students will vote on Thursday, February 20th, for the selection of the team mascot.
This will be an exciting time for both of our schools. Both of our schools have outstanding students, great staffs, and tremendous communities to support us. Early on, our primary focus will be the creation of our combined coaching staffs and supporting student-athletes from both of our schools in making a positive and successful transition into a combined athletics program.
More information can be found in a summary packet that is linked to this article. Clicking the link at the top of this article will allow you to view a brief summary.
