By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

Beginning in fall 2025, athletes and coaches at Lee County’s public high schools will experience a number of changes that will impact who their teams play as part of a conference schedule and what playoffs schedules may look like.

Lee County Schools Public Information Officer James Alverson briefed the school board last week on changes adopted by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association, the governing body for high school athletics in the state, that will impact high school athletic programs beginning in fall semester of 2025, with the number of high school classifications expanding from four to eight.

Where 4A was the highest number designation previously, the new system will classify high schools on a scale between 1A and 8A.

The new bylaw that was approved last November by the NCHSAA Board of Directors provides no more than 64 schools will be members in each classification. The purpose of the new structure is to give it room to grow, and eight classifications could potentially allow up to 80 new members to join over the coming years.

The NCHSAA asked its members last year which potential realignment method they preferred. The one that received the largest amount of support would group the 32 largest high schools into a Big 32 or Super 32 classification, and then split the remaining schools among the other seven classifications, with an average of 57 to 58 high schools per grouping.

Alverson said the NCSHAA has recently completed a memorandum of understanding with the N.C. State Board of Education that spell out the changes in regulations that govern high school athletics, though most of those, he said, are relatively minor. But the impact on what athletes and their families are used to seeing may be dramatic at first.

“It means that there will likely be a new conference for Lee County High School and Southern Lee, potentially a whole new conference, depending on how things shake out,” he said. “But it is likely that Lee County High School will fall into the 6A classification, as the classifications will run from the smallest at 1A all the way up to the largest at 8A. Southern Lee will likely become one of the larger 5A schools.”

Those designations aren’t set in stone just yet, since they will be based solely on average daily membership numbers from the 2024-25 school year and that data is yet to come.

Until then, high schools – along with their athletes and coaches – will just have to be patient as all this begins to take shape. In a statement issued in March of this year, the NCHSAA said “we are not sure that the NCHSAA will even keep conferences. Going to eight classifications makes sorting the leagues out very difficult.”

Trying to wrap their heads around what a playoff schedule might look like with eight classifications is no easier. Some are already suggesting the thinner fields of teams to choose from could mean that every team should make the playoffs. If that were to be true, then what is the reason for having a conference at all?

Another change will create a cap on the percentage of classes athletes can miss and still maintain their eligibility to play. In fall 2024, local boards of education can establish their own standards for classroom attendance and how absences may impact the eligibility of an athlete to participate in sports. Lee County Schools has had an attendance policy for years, so this semester will be no change from what is already in place.

But beginning in spring 2025 and continuing thereafter, the State Board of Education’s standards take effect, where no more than 13 absences will be permitted without loss of eligibility to participate (or the athlete must be in class for 85 percent of its scheduled time).

This new attendance standard becomes effective for student athletes when they return to classes after the holiday break in December of 2024. There will be an appeal process where student athletes who have more than the permitted number of absences can request a waiver.

Alverson said “a great deal of this is still very much up in the air, and we won’t start to get a clear picture until those enrollment numbers start coming in.”

Meanwhile, the North Carolina Coaches Association is meeting this week in Greensboro, and these changes are certain to be among the hot topics for discussion.