NCHSAA releases 2nd draft of 2025-29 realignment

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) on Tuesday morning released the second of three total drafts for its proposed conferences for the 2025-29 statewide realignment.

And while minor changes were made to each of Burke County’s five schools’ proposed leagues, the basic setup remained intact, with Draughn, East Burke, and Patton all staying together, and three total conferences in place of which county schools would be members.

Like in the first draft released on Dec. 18, East Burke (4A), Draughn (3A), and Patton (3A) are still all slated as members of the proposed (and yet unnamed) “3A/4A Conference F” in the second draft.

West Caldwell (3A) and Hibriten (4A) remain in the league, though R-S Central, Chase, and East Rutherford were shifted to a proposed, massive 10-team league with several Cleveland, Lincoln, and Gaston county schools.

In their place, Ashe County (4A) was added to the league alongside the Burke and Caldwell schools to represent a proposed six-team league.

Also in Tuesday’s second draft, Freedom (6A) remains with South Caldwell (6A), Watauga (6A), and McDowell (7A) in “6A/7A Conference I”, but Alexander Central and St. Stephens were shifted into a league with Iredell schools.

Joining the league in draft two were A.C. Reynolds (6A), Asheville (6A), and T.C. Roberson (6A), growing the proposed league to seven teams. Freedom was most recently in a league alongside the Buncombe County schools in the 2007-08 school year.

And NCSSM-Morganton was removed from its exclusively Charlotte-area 1A/2A league from the first draft and placed into a three-way split conference with Gaston, Lincoln, and Rutherford county schools in the new draft.

The other members of “1A/2A/3A Conference B” include Thomas Jefferson (1A), Cherryville (2A), Highland Tech (2A), Mountain Island Charter (2A), Bessemer City (3A), and Piedmont Community Charter (3A).

NCSSM-M’s proposed conference in the first draft had included fellow 1As Carolina International, Jackson Day, and Valor Prep, plus 2A schools Queen’s Grant and Sugar Creek.

The current NCHSAA realignment is unlike any before it since the state is doubling the number of classifications from four (a number that’s been in place for nearly 65 years) to eight beginning this August.

As announced over the summer, the largest 32 schools in the state will make up the 8A class, with the remaining member schools as evenly divided as possible among the lower seven classes (with roughly 60 schools apiece).

Schools each learned their new classifications in November when the NCHSAA announced average daily membership (ADM) numbers, which are the sole determining factor for placement in this realignment (unlike in the previous one which incorporated athletic success and socioeconomic factors).

Each NCHSAA member school has the opportunity to file an appeal of its conference placement. The deadline for appeals is Jan. 28, and all schools wishing to provide additional feedback on the second draft will be heard at the next realignment committee meeting in Chapel Hill on Feb. 3-4, according to HighSchoolOT.com.

Local reaction and takeaway

Casey Rogers, Burke County Public School’s countywide athletic director, is one of 21 members on the realignment committee.

Rogers said after the first draft that he feels keeping Draughn, EB, and Patton together is a great thing for each school and for local sports as a whole.

Those three schools were each members of the Northwestern Foothills 2A Athletic Conference (NWFAC) from 2017-21 before being separated three different ways from 2021-25.

“First, it cuts travel for Patton and Draughn considerably,” Rogers said. “And then playing each other later in seasons with potentially more at stake means you get more games that folks around here want to see and so probably also some bigger gates.”

The six-team league that those three schools have now been placed in does mean fewer conference games and provides a few scheduling and logistical headaches that way but staying together — as opposed to the current setup, in which league contests are as far away as Rosman, Hendersonville, and Madison — more than offsets any complications.

“It’s a really tough job that the realignment committee has,” said East Burke athletic director Chip Watts, “but I think they’ve been wonderful in trying to make the geography and travel matter the most, and I thank Coach Rogers and the whole committee for their work.”

Watts, as well as Patton and Freedom ADs Lee Crawford and Rob Scott and Draughn football coach Chris Powell, each had no complaints about the newly proposed leagues.

Powell mentioned the nonconference scheduling flexibility as another positive of the proposed league.

With the state adding classes, perhaps the biggest change to conference setups in the upcoming realignment is the addition of the three-way splits, a first all-time this realignment.

And though the number of three-way split leagues is down from seven in the first draft to four in the second draft, NCSSM-M finds itself as low man on the totem pole alongside mostly 2As and 3As.

NCSSM-M athletic officials could not be reached for comment.

According to information from the NCHSAA’s realignment committee, the third and final draft of realignment is expected to be announced in February or March.

NOTE: Visit shorturl.at/5B8Tr for the complete list of NCHSAA 2025-29 proposed conferences in the second draft of realignment.