The North Carolina High School Athletic Association has released the third draft of conferences for the 2025-2029 realignment.

The first draft was released on Dec. 18. The second draft was released on January 21, after the realignment committee worked through over 170 response forms from member schools.

This third draft will come after a series of in-person appeals by schools. The realignment committee heard these appeals in Chapel Hill over a two-day period the week of February 3.

After this draft, which is the final proposal from the realignment committee, schools will have a chance to appeal to the NCHSAA Board of Directors before the conferences are approved for the 2025 school year. Once the conferences are confirmed by the Board of Directors, the NCHSAA Bylaw Task Force will present a plan for playoff qualifying, seeding, and practice size, which will have to be approved by the Board as well.

It is likely that there will be specially called meetings of the Board before their regular spring meeting to approve all of these realignment and playoff changes.

For the first time in its extensive history, the NCHSAA will have member schools divided into eight classifications. The largest class, 8A, will have the 32 largest schools in the state by population. The 1A through 7A classes will be evenly divided and have just under 60 schools apiece.

Unlike the previous realignment for 2021-25, the next realignment is sorting schools into classifications by average daily membership only. The ADMs numbers represent the amount of students attending the institution on a daily basis. The previous cycle utilized a formula that combined the ADM numbers, free and reduced lunch data, and past success via the Wells Fargo Cup results.

After receiving the ADM numbers for the 2024-25 school year, the NCHSAA staff devised an initial set of conferences. That document was then passed on to the official Realignment Committee for the 2025-29 cycle. The committee is made up of school officials and coaches from each of the state’s regions.

The realignment committee took the NCHSAA staff’s early ideas and revised them into the first draft. The second draft made adjustments to the first draft. The third draft was based on the second draft.

To compare the third draft to the first and drafts, see both documents below: