The Cornbelt Conference is one of the oldest high school athletic conferences in Iowa. Tracing its history to the 1930s, the Cornbelt has always been a conference filled by some of the smallest schools in the state. Currently, the conference has 11 teams, 10 of which are 8-man football schools (including defending state champion Armstrong-Ringsted), which is an option for smaller schools in Iowa.
The conference began with members in Ruthven, Titonka, Swea City, Armstrong, Sioux Rapids, Marathon, West Bend, Mallard, Terril, Graettinger, and Thompson. Over the years, the conference expanded to include Harris-Lake Park, Everly, Sioux Valley, Clay Central, South Clay, Rembrandt, Arnolds Park, Albert City-Truesdale, and Ocheydan. Other schools such as Titonka, Swea City, Armstrong, and Thompson left the conference. Since most of the schools were very small, the years saw Sioux Rapids and Rembrandt merge, Ruthven and Ayrshire merge, and Ocheydan leave the conference to join the much bigger Sibley High School. Arnolds Park also left to merge into Okoboji High School in 1987, and in 1988, Clay Central and Everly merged.
By 1990, the conference was made up of Clay Central-Everly, Harris-Lake Park, Graettinger, Albert City-Truesdale, Ruthven-Ayrshire, West Bend, Mallard, Terril, Sioux Valley, Sioux Rapids-Rembrandt, and South Clay. Since most of the 11 members were still facing possible mergers (including the planned merger of West Bend and Mallard for 1991), the conference added North Kossuth of Swea City, Sentral of Fenton, Armstrong-Ringsted, and Lincoln Central, who was sharing some sports with Estherville. Sioux Rapids-Rembrandt would merge with Sioux Valley soon after to become Sioux Central of Sioux Rapids. After Lincoln Central High School joined with Estherville, the conference was left with 12 teams. In the mid-90s, Sioux Central and Albert City-Truesdale left the conference for the newly formed Northwest Conference and South Clay closed its high school. By the late-90s, Terril was sharing sports with Ruthven-Ayrshire under the Lakeland High School moniker. After that sharing agreement ended in 2004, Terril started sharing with Graettinger instead and left Ruthven-Ayrshire on its own. The conference expanded from 8 to 12 schools in 2005 with the addition of four schools from the recently defunct North Star Conference. These schools where C-W-L, TRV of Bode, Ventura, and W-CL-T. Sentral and North Kossuth merged effective 2007-08 school year to become North Sentral Kossuth High School. With most of the schools being among the smallest in the state and with the schools spanning almost 100 miles east to west, the league is not stable and likely never will be. Armstrong-Ringsted has talked about sharing sports with Emmetsburg and Greattinger-Terril and Ruthven-Ayrshire have also explored sharing options with other nearby schools. Ventura remains a long distance from most of the other schools in the conference, as well.
Beginning with the 2010-11 school year, the conference will lose Twin River Valley and W-CL-T as members. Both had been products of whole grade sharing agreements between two districts and in an interesting twist, the two districts decided to begin sharing with separate nearby schools. Woden-Crystal Lake will, for example be sending its high school students to Forest City High School, while Titonka will send its 5-12 students to Algona. Twin River Valley split up in a similar fashion, sending students to Humboldt Community School District and to West Bend-Mallard.