The North Carolina High School Athletic Association approved its 2025-29 realignment plan on March 3, ending a months-long process of reclassifying and reorganizing its member schools.
The finalized conferences and classifications were released in a document Thursday. Schools were classified based on their average daily membership numbers for the 2024-25 school year.
Chatham County’s schools were split into four separate conferences.
Chatham Charter and Woods Charter were placed in “1A Conference 3,” an all-1A conference including Ascend Leadership, Central Carolina Academy, Clover Garden, River Mill Academy and Southern Wake Academy. The conference isn’t too different from the current Central Tar Heel 1A conference, except Central Carolina replaced Triangle Math and Science (now in “1A/2A/3A Conference A”).
Chatham Central, also a 1A school, is the only Chatham County school in “1A/2A Conference E” alongside College Prep and Leadership (1A), North Stokes (1A), South Davidson (1A), Winston-Salem Prep (1A), Bishop McGuinness (2A) and South Stokes (2A).
Jordan-Matthews (4A) and Northwood (3A) were placed together in “3A/4A Conference B” alongside Eastern Randolph (3A), North Moore (3A), Southwestern Randolph (4A) and Uwharrie Charter (4A).
Seaforth (5A) is the lone Chatham County school in “4A/5A Conference A” with Cedar Ridge (5A), Durham School of the Arts (5A), Orange (5A), South Granville (5A), Webb (5A) and Carrboro (4A).
None of the conferences involving Chatham County schools were changed from the third draft released on Feb. 14 as none of the county’s schools made any last-minute requests in front of the NCHSAA Board of Directors last week.
The next steps for the NCHSAA will be figuring out how the playoffs will work for each classification.
The new alignment will change matchups between the county’s schools for the next few years.
With Northwood moving down to 2A and joining the Mid-Carolina 1A/2A conference last school year, all four of the Chatham County Schools system high schools were in the same conference for the first time ever. The past two seasons, rivalry matchups between Northwood and Jordan-Matthews, Northwood and Seaforth and Chatham Central and Jordan-Matthews were often played more than once a year and had conference and playoff implications. But now, some of the historic rivalry games will have to fit into the non-conference schedule.
There should be some interesting new conference matchups based on the recent histories of certain programs, though.
Eastern Randolph, which has turned into a solid boys’ basketball program over the last three seasons, including a state title appearance in 2023, will likely get to battle Northwood more than once a year.
There will also be more of Carrboro and Seaforth in boys’ basketball too, which put on a thrilling game in November. In girls’ soccer, Carrboro may give Seaforth stiffer conference competition, considering the Jaguars haven’t lost more than three games since 2018 and beat 1A state runner up Woods Charter 7-0 in last year’s regular season.
In football, Eastern Randolph, North Moore and Northwood could make for some big Friday night matchups with the Mustangs and Chargers splitting their last two meetings in the Mid-Carolina 1A/2A conference and the Wildcats being one of the top programs out of the 1A West classification over the past few years.