The Tri-County Conference didn't waste any time finding a replacement for Warsaw.
Boonville provided the early Christmas present for the Tri-County. Boonville voted unanimously to accept the Tri-County's invitation to join the conference during last Tuesday's school board meeting.
"Athletically and competitively, I think they'll fit right in," Blair Oaks athletic director Corey Felten said. "They'll help increase the competition level, making every school in the Tri-County continue to compete harder. The number of schools that we get past the district playoffs is pretty phenomenal.
"To get another school like that, to be able to push us, that's going to be pretty cool."
The move will go into effect at the start of the 2018-19 school year, which is when Warsaw will leave the Tri-County to join the Ozark Highlands Conference. Boonville is currently a member of the North Central Missouri Conference.
"We're very excited," Boonville athletic director Chris Shikles said. "Obviously, it was a tough decision to leave the NCMC. We forged a lot of good relationships throughout the years we were in that conference."
Following Warsaw's announcement to leave the conference in October, administrators and athletic directors from the Tri-County gathered to start looking for Warsaw's replacement.
"There was discussion of about five schools, and Boonville was at the top of several of the lists," Felten said. "Geographically, Boonville makes sense to a lot of them, such as Eldon, Versailles and California. That's an easy drive for all three of those (schools). Boonville to Hallsville is not a bad drive. Geographically, it fits."
The conference extended an invitation to Boonville last month.
During the November school board meeting, Boonville agreed to put together a committee of board members, community members, administrators and coaches to explore the pros and cons of making a move to the Tri-County. The committee then presented its findings at last week's school board meeting.
Shikles said the committee came up with plenty of pros for the move.
"The term 'a better fit' came into play a lot," Shikles said. "People on the committee, on the school board, administration and coaches, they just kept saying it was a better fit for us, not only geographically but also enrollment sizes of the schools in the Tri-County."
In the NCMC, Boonville had the smallest enrollment of the seven member schools, listed at 512 students for the current two-year cycle. Hannibal has the highest enrollment (1,024), followed by Marshall (818), Kirksville (756), Moberly (735), Mexico (675) and Fulton (655).
In the Tri-County, Boonville will have the third-largest enrollment, trailing only Eldon (605) and School of the Osage (551).
The move to the Tri-County will also lead to shorter bus drives to Boonville for conference games. In the NCMC, Boonville has had to make long drives each season to Kirksville and Hannibal, both of which are about two-hour drives by bus.
The longest trip Boonville will have to make in the Tri-County is to Osage, which is 70 miles.
"We hope that leads to more community involvement going to road games and creating some rivalries," Shikles said.
Boonville already has a few budding rivalries with Tri-County schools they have built during nonconference play.
California has been a natural nonconference rival in years past for Boonville, particularly in football. The two teams met for the Class 3 state championship in 1998 - Boonville won 33-22 - and from 2010-15, the Pirates and the Pintos played each other during the regular season.
Boonville's boys soccer team won against Southern Boone this past fall in the Class 2 sectionals and the two teams met in 2014 and 2015 for the district championship.
Felten said he is ready to form a rivalry between Blair Oaks and Boonville in several sports. So far this school year, Blair Oaks and Boonville have only faced each other in volleyball, which occurred at the Eldon Tournament.
"That's going to make it even better," Felten said of forming rivalries with Boonville. "It just makes their transition smooth. Everybody is ready to start getting them scheduled into events and get the ball rolling on that end.
"As far as what they bring to the table, I think they'll bring the 'A' game out of everybody."
Boonville has been prominent in several sports during the past calendar year. The boys soccer team won its first district title this fall and advanced to the Class 2 quarterfinals. Both the boys and girls basketball teams won Class 3 district championships. The baseball team advanced to the Class 4 state title game for the first time in program history.
There is one drawback for Boonville in its transition from the NCMC to the Tri-County. Soccer and tennis are not conference sports offered by the Tri-County, so Boonville will become an independent in those two sports.
However, Shikles said filling tennis and soccer schedules shouldn't be an issue for Boonville.
"Because of where we're located, people want to play us," Shikles said. "We're dead in the center of the state of Missouri. I have the opportunity to go from a 100-mile radius to get games.
"It's really nice because of our location and our reputation. People want to play us."
Although Boonville doesn't officially join the conference for nearly a year-and-a-half, Shikles said he is meeting with other athletic directors in the conference next month to start discussing scheduling for the 2018-19 season.
"We'll need to get on that pretty quick," Shikles said.
Boonville has been a member of the NCMC since the 2008-09 school year. Before that, the Pirates had previously been a member of the Missouri River Valley Conference.
Shikles said Boonville will continue to play some NCMC schools in non-conference contests when it joins the Tri-County.
"We're looking to play those teams in the future," Shikles said. "There have been verbal commitments from those (schools) and athletic directors who say they'd still love to play us. We're leaving on a good note."