3. Magic Valley Conference - Idaho
Camas County Mushers
Photo courtesy of camascountyschools.org
With this league name, we would expect the schools' mascots to be lots of Wizards, maybe some rabbits, maybe sorcerers. So where did they decide that this specific valley in southern Idaho is magical? The most common explanation,
according to the Twin Falls Times-News, is that irrigation magically transformed the landscape into plentiful crops, or maybe that an old newspaperman coined the term for advertising purposes.
According to Wikipedia, dams and canals "magically transformed what had been considered a nearly
uninhabitable area into some of the most productive farmland in the
northwestern U.S. Many cities and towns in the region were founded between 1900 and 1910 as a direct result of these projects."
Local look: "The Magic Valley Conference isn't really a league anymore for anything other than track and field. It used to be a volleyball and basketball league when Idaho just had one 1A conference. The Twin Falls region is called the Magic Valley, so the name fit since the conference stretched from Sun Valley to Castleford, Malta to Bliss. Only in track and field do they still use the MVC name. Though when you count all the schools in that track and field league, it covers an area about the same size as Connecticut."
- David Bashore, sports editor at the Twin Falls Times-News (@TNBashore)Schools: Glenns Ferry,
Hagerman,
Hansen,
Raft River (Malta),
Shoshone,
Bliss,
Camas County (Fairfield),
Carey,
Castleford,
Community (Sun Valley),
Dietrich,
Idaho School for the Deaf & Blind (Gooding),
Lighthouse Christian (Twin Falls),
Murtaugh,
North Valley Academy (Gooding),
Richfield.
View Glenns Ferry Elementary School in a larger map
