NCHSAA begins realignment cycle for 2021-2025

CHAPEL HILL — Every four years, NCHSAA member schools are realigned into conferences, and this week the state’s athletics governing body released details regarding that process and its timeline over the coming months.

The realignment process will be guided by the average daily membership numbers that are submitted to the State Department of Public Instruction.

Using those numbers, the schools will be divided into four classification, just like they are now. That classification will hold for all sports and the schools will remain in that classification for the playoffs.

However, because of the widespread impact of COVID-19, the 2019-2020 first month average daily membership numbers will comprise half the data used to divide the schools. The other half will include the average of the three previous years of Identified Student Percentage numbers and the average of the previous three years of NCHSAA State Cup points.

Together, those three data points will be used to sort the schools into their new classification, which is scheduled to take effect August 1, 2021 at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year and remain in place until 2025, when the next realignment cycle will begin.

The NCHSAA has divided the state into east and west, and schools within each region will be sorted from largest to smallest based on their corresponding realignment scores, calculated from those three primary data points. 25% of the schools in each region will be designated 4A, 25% will be 3A, 25% will be 2A and the remaining 25% will be 1A.

In the western region, each of the four classifications will have 54 schools apiece, while in the eastern region, the 4A, 3A and 2A classifications will each have 52 schools and 1A will have 53 schools.

Split conferences will be created, if necessary, in order to avoid hardships such as geography and travel.

Realignment timeline

On Tuesday, the NCHSAA informed its member schools about the process, procedure and timeline information regarding realignment.

The first draft of the new realignment plan will be released to the schools for consideration on Dec. 10 and they will have until Jan. 8 to submit any concerns or desired adjustments on the first draft.

Then, the realignment committee will review the submissions from schools on Jan. 13 and submit a second draft to schools for review on Jan. 14. The schools will then have just a week to submit additional concerns.

Review of the third draft of the realignment plan occurs in February and then the NCHSAA Board of Directors will vote on the finalized 2021-2025 plan in March.