The North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) has unveiled their first draft of what conferences would look like during the 2025-29 realignment period. Here is an explanation of how the proposal would impact Scotland and all of the other schools in the current 3A/4A Sandhills Athletic Conference (Union Pines, Southern Lee, Lee County, Hoke County, Pinecrest and Richmond) if the plan were to get finalized in 2025:
-Scotland would be placed into the 5A/6A Conference B as a 6A team. The two 5A schools in the conference would be Douglas Byrd and St. Pauls while the other 6A schools would consist of E.E. Smith, Gray’s Creek, Seventy-First, South View, Terry Sanford and Westover.
-Union Pines, Southern Lee and Lee County would all become part of the 6A Conference 1. Harnett Central, Triton and Western Harnett would make up the other schools in the conference. All six schools would be 6A teams.
-Hoke County and Pinecrest would move to the 7A/8A Conference A as 8A teams while Richmond would join the conference as a 7A school. The remaining schools in the conference would be Cape Fear, Jack Britt, Lumberton, Overhills, Pine Forest and Purnell Swett. All of them would join under the 7A classification.
The realignment will sort schools into their classification strictly by average daily membership. This is a change from the previous realignment cycle for 2021-25, where a formula was used that took a combination of ADM numbers, free and reduced lunch data and past success via the Wells Fargo Cup results into account.
This will be the first time that the NCHSAA will have schools divided into eight classifications. The 8A class will have the 32 biggest schools in the state by population while 1A through 7A classes will be evenly divided with nearly 60 schools each. That was decided back in April when the “Big 32” realignment model was adopted by the NCHSAA.
Schools will get a chance to give feedback and/or offer counter proposals before finalization of the model occurs in the new year.