Sports: high schoolers love to play and watch them. Conference changes have made way for new, exciting teams for WS to compete against. With these changes, an issue has arisen and may affect WS sports as a whole. It has made getting into post season a good deal harder.
“It’s going to be harder…. It’s more about our cross country team than our track team. There’s eight teams for cross country, there’s 18 teams in the region, and the top three get out, which is pretty difficult to do,” said coach Brad Adams.
Another issue is that the southern parts of Virginia seem to be favored more than their northern counterparts. For instance, the conference changes have made it more difficult in terms of travel since northern teams have to play more southern teams. “These conference changes favor the southern part of [Virginia]. There are more high schools in the Northern Region… So less schools in our area are making it to the state meet,” said Adams.
These conference changes are upsetting many of the coaches from the Northern Virginia area. “As far as cross country is concerned, [coaches] are concerned, they went to the VHSL, and they were upset with how our sport was affected,” said Coach Adams.
This noticeable outrage will surely catch the attention of VHSL officials, and changes could be made soon.
Football season has had an amazing 4-1 start. For the team, it seems that everything is going according to plan, but Coach Jason Eldridge noticed some conference changes that are concerning him. “Our conference is probably a little tougher top to bottom….As far as the playoffs are concerned, it totally changes how we do the playoffs now. Instead of 16 teams in a ‘mega-region,’ now it’s two separate regions with 8 teams, so the percentages based on that, are a little bit worse, to make the playoffs,” said Coach Eldridge.
“I think the teams that got [hurt] in this are the middle of the road teams, because we have to play up a level, down a level, and at the middle level. Where we exist, [we] are unfortunately in a position to play tougher teams,” said Eldridge.
Some of the varsity football players have concerns as well, “I think it takes away some rivalries that were brought up through the years,” said Tristan Lucas.
This conference change is seen as a positive way for teams to interact with one another but it has only brought more problems. “I wish they would get it right, I wish they would stop making these changes, and just find something that works,” Adams said.