Lincoln Trail Conference: teams and how we cover it
Last updated August 16, 2026.
The Lincoln Trail Conference is the small-school league at the heart of Muddy River Sport’s coverage area. Several of the programs we follow closely compete here, making it one of the most important conferences on our local map.
The thirteen member schools
- Abingdon-Avon (A-Town Tornadoes)
- Annawan
- Bureau Valley
- Galva
- Knoxville (Blue Bullets)
- Princeville
- Ridgewood (Alwood/Cambridge)
- ROWVA
- Stark County
- United (Red Storm)
- West Central (Heat, Biggsville)
- Wethersfield
- Williamsfield
ROWVA and Williamsfield are separate member schools that co-op in several sports, including football, where they compete as ROWVA/Williamsfield.
Important: football works differently
This is the single most common point of confusion, so it is worth being direct about it.
For football, the Lincoln Trail and Prairieland conferences merged their operations in 2023. The two leagues now compete as a combined 17-team Lincoln Trail-Prairieland football league, split into Large and Small divisions by IHSA enrollment. Schools still compete as Lincoln Trail members in every other sport.
So if you are looking for football standings, you want Lincoln Trail-Prairieland Large or Small — not the Lincoln Trail Conference as listed above.
Two further exceptions: West Central plays eight-man football in the Illinois 8-Man Football Association rather than IHSA eleven-man football, so the Heat are not part of the Lincoln Trail-Prairieland football league at all. And Monmouth-Roseville, despite being a near neighbor of several member schools, is not a Lincoln Trail member — the Titans play in the Three Rivers Conference.
2025 Lincoln Trail-Prairieland Large division
Final standings: Farmington (7-0, 11-1), Macomb (6-1, 9-2), Knoxville (4-3, 5-5), Hamilton/Warsaw (4-3, 6-4), Illini West (3-4, 5-5), Elmwood/Brimfield (3-4, 3-6), Bureau Valley (1-6, 1-8), Lewistown/Cuba/Spoon River Valley (0-7, 0-9).
2025 Lincoln Trail-Prairieland Small division
Members: Stark County, Rushville-Industry, Princeville, Annawan-Wethersfield, Abingdon-Avon, ROWVA/Williamsfield, Havana, Astoria/VIT and United.
A true small-school league
The Lincoln Trail Conference is made up of small public high schools spread across several west-central and north-central Illinois counties. Its schools compete for conference championships across the fall, winter and spring seasons, and its all-conference teams are a yearly highlight.
These are the programs where one athlete can change a season, where the gym is the center of town on a Friday night, and where a good year gets remembered for a decade. They are the reason this site exists.
Conference membership from the Lincoln Trail Conference. Division alignments for 2026 are being confirmed with the league — if you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it same day.
