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Ridgewood Spartans Boys Basketball: 2026-27 Schedule and History

Ridgewood Spartans · Woodhull, Illinois · Lincoln Trail Conference

Coach: Tom Moriarity · AlWood all-time: 804-939 (.461) · Cambridge all-time: 749-844 (.470)

Between them, the two schools that make up Ridgewood have played 136 seasons of boys basketball and won one sectional championship.

AlWood: four regionals, and a 29-1 season

804-939 across 68 seasons, from 1948-49 to 2023-24.

Regional titles (4): 1956-57 (24-7), 1957-58 (29-1), 1958-59 (27-2), 1985-86 (26-2). District titles: 1948-49, 1954-55.

No sectional, no super-sectional, no state finals — ever.

Three consecutive regionals in the late 1950s, including a 29-1 year, and then nothing at that level for twenty-seven years. The 1985-86 team went 26-2 and won the fourth.

Cambridge: one regional, one sectional, the same year

749-844 across 68 seasons, from 1922-23 to 2005-06, when the standalone programme ends.

District titles: 1922-23, 1933-34, 1967-68, 1969-70. Regional and sectional: 1986-87, a 27-2 season under J.C. Wise — the only regional and the only sectional in Cambridge history, won together.

No super-sectional, no state finals. The last three Cambridge seasons on file: 8-19, 6-20 and 5-22 under Nathan Rueter.

A correction to our own research

Worth setting out, because it shows how these records go wrong.

A first automated pass through the IHSA pages returned an AlWood boys team finishing second in state in 1993-94 at 31-1 under Brad Jackson. We re-read the table row by row. The actual 1993-94 AlWood boys season was 13-12 under Steve Lemon, with no title, and the 1994 Class A final was Pinckneyville 67, Eureka 65.

The phantom row was real data in the wrong place — it belongs to the AlWood girls, who genuinely did go 31-1 and finish second in state in 1993-94 under Brad Jackson. One sport’s row had bled into another’s table. We discarded it here and reported it where it belongs.

Eight blank seasons

AlWood’s file has a serious hole at the end. Eight consecutive seasons — 2016-17 through 2023-24 — carry a coach’s name and no win-loss record. The last season with an actual figure is 2015-16, 15-15 under Casey Adamson.

Before that: 16-12 in 2013-14 and 26-3 in 2014-15. So the last documented good season at this school was more than a decade ago, and everything since is blank.

How the co-op works, and where the records went

Ridgewood is the AlWood and Cambridge co-op, formed in 2009 and based in Woodhull. It covers basketball, volleyball and eight-man football.

The IHSA does not publish a combined Ridgewood line for any sport. It keeps the two predecessor tables and, as far as we can tell, files the co-op’s results under one of them — which one varies by sport, and neither page is labelled as a co-op.

So there is no such thing as “Ridgewood’s all-time record”. Anyone quoting one has made it up. What exists are two separate school records, both of which we set out below.

How it compares to the school’s other sports

The football Spartans play eight-man, one of three area schools to do so. Volleyball has the same filing puzzle as basketball — AlWood’s record stops in 2008-09, Cambridge’s resumes in 2018-19, with a nine-year gap and no combined line.

2026-27 schedule

The 2026-27 listing is among the thinnest in the conference — around three games posted. IHSA boys practice is scheduled to open Monday, November 9.

We will publish the full schedule on this page as soon as it is posted, and update results through the season.

Finding Ridgewood online

Ridgewood is not a town. The school is the AlWood and Cambridge co-op, based in Woodhull, Henry County — and the IHSA has no “Ridgewood” table at all, filing everything under AlWood (Woodhull) and Cambridge separately. There is also a Ridgewood High School in Norridge, in the Chicago suburbs, which dominates search results for the name. MaxPreps lists this team as Ridgewood [AlWood/Cambridge] Spartans.

Coverage of Lincoln Trail basketball is thin in general. MaxPreps carries schedules and scores when schools update them, which is inconsistent at this level. The IHSA’s record pages are authoritative but frequently years behind. No local outlet runs a nightly area scoreboard in winter.

We will post results on this page through the season. If you have a score before we do, send it and it goes up with credit.

What we are still chasing

  • Win-loss records for AlWood’s eight blank seasons, 2016-17 to 2023-24
  • Which school the co-op’s basketball results are actually filed under
  • The full 2026-27 schedule and roster

Where Ridgewood (AlWood) rank in the area

Across the fourteen boys basketball programmes we cover, Ridgewood (AlWood) sit eighth by all-time wins (804), twelfth by winning percentage (.461) and tenth by regional championships (four).

The nearest programmes by wins are ROWVA/Williamsfield Cougars above (898) and Bureau Valley Storm below (445).

The sectional round is the wall. Ridgewood (AlWood) have won four regional titles and lost the sectional every time — four exits at the same stage, and no sectional championship in the programme’s history.

No state finals trophy. Seven area programmes have one; this is not among them.

Full comparisons for every programme, plus conference structure, season dates and how the Illinois postseason works, are on our area boys basketball guide.

By the numbers

Games on record 1,743
Recorded seasons 68
Average wins per season 11.8
Average games per season 26
Regional titles 4
Share of all area regionals 2.9%
Years since last regional 40
Calculated from the IHSA record. Averages use recorded seasons only, so where the file has blank years the true per-season figures will differ.

40 years is a long time. A player starting at Ridgewood this winter was not born the last time the programme won a regional, and neither were their older siblings.

Send us results

Rosters, schedules, scores, corrections, photographs — send them and they go up with credit. We correct errors the same day we learn about them.


All-time record, championship years and state finishes from the IHSA’s per-school record page at ihsa.org, with the school total arithmetically verified against its individual season rows — AlWood’s 18 coach subtotals sum exactly to 804-939 across 68 years, and Cambridge’s 17 to 749-844 across 68. Coaching and schedule detail from MaxPreps team pages, retrieved September 2026. Corrections posted the same day.

C. Jackson Cowart

C. Jackson Cowart is a sports writer and editor whose work has appeared in ESPN, Forbes, Front Office Sports and Advance Local publications. He edits Muddy River Sport's coverage of high school and college athletics in Galesburg, Monmouth, Knox County and the surrounding communities of west-central Illinois. He works remotely from Washington state. Muddy River Sport's Friday night coverage depends on people who are actually in the bleachers — coaches, parents, scorekeepers and photographers across west-central Illinois who send in scores, results and photos as games end. If that's you, we want to hear from you: [email protected]

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