New NCHSAA lacrosse conferences for next season

Southern Durham, Voyager Academy and Union Pines are among the area schools adding varsity boys lacrosse for the upcoming season.

The major change in boys’ conferences is the joining of the PAC-6 4A schools with Pinecrest, Union Pines and Fayetteville’s Jack Britt High to make an eight-team league. Southern Durham and Voyager will join the rest of their respective Big 8 3A and North Central 1A leagues, which share a 10-team conference with Carrboro.

On the girls’ side, Cary is reinstating a varsity program this year and First Flight is adding a team for the far-flung “Conference 2,” which now stretches from Greenville to Jacksonville to the Outer Banks.

Fayetteville’s Jack Britt and Terry Sanford are adding girls’ programs and will be placed into the same conference as Pinecrest as well as PAC-6 4A, Big 8 3A and Mid-State 2A schools.

A few more notes...

▪ It looks like we’re about a year away from splitting the girls’ championships from 4A to 3A. Realignment will help with some of that.

▪ The only WCPSS schools without either lacrosse team are East Wake, Knightdale and Southeast Raleigh (which used to field a successfuly boys lacrosse team).

▪ The only WCPSS schools with a boys team but without a girls team are Fuquay-Varina, Garner (club only).

▪ It’s quite a drive to form the “new” PAC-6. It’s almost two hours one-way from Jack Britt to Riverside. If Union Pines starts girls lacrosse next year, or if Terry Sanford starts boys lacrosse, it’s possible those teams will form a small 4-team conference. That may have to happen anyway, as the Triangle conferences change dramatically.

▪ Jack Britt and Terry Sanford are the first schools in Cumberland County with lacrosse. In the N&O area (which doesn’t include Cumberland) only eight counties don’t have lacrosse: Johnston, Harnett, Lee, Warren, Franklin, Wayne, Nash and Wilson. Harnett (Triton) and Wayne (Eastern Wayne) once had the sport. Johnston players from Cleveland, Corinth Holders and Clayton High have been suiting up for a club team in Clayton.

▪ Voyager and Roxboro Community are the only two 1A schools in the East with lacrosse. Atkins High in Winston-Salem is the only non-charter public school with the sport.

▪ Southern Vance is listed on the NCHSAA’s chart for girls lacrosse, but the school says that’s an error from previous years. The Raiders wanted to add the sport a few years ago, but haven’t been removed from the NCHSAA list despite never fielding a team.

▪ No varsity lacrosse yet for D.H. Conley, which like the Garner girls, had a club boys’ team last spring.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 11:16 AM with the headline "New NCHSAA lacrosse conferences for next season."