By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Aligning all the seven high schools in the Alamance-Burlington School System in the same conference took considerable leg work as the process unfolded last winter.
Now it’s a matter of seeing how it all comes together with the start of the new athletics school year this month.
The seven schools, plus Roxboro Person, will be members of the newly formed Mid-Carolina Conference. With the North Carolina Athletic High School Athletic Association’s new eight-classification set-up – increasing from four – are plenty of changes.
But what some school officials in Alamance County were seeking was a return of sorts to yesteryear – all teams competing in the same league. Granted, there’s Southeast Alamance, which opened in 2023, now in the mix, but the idea is the same.
“I think it’s going to be great,” said Williams football coach Patrick Stokes, a Williams graduate before a long stint as an assistant coach at Eastern Alamance. “All these schools together, and that means there should be even more interest. A lot of people remember how this used to be.”
Across the past couple of decades, teams from the county have been splintered in terms of league membership. Cummings and Graham were assigned groupings with various out-of-county schools.
“I like we get a chance to go against the county,” veteran Cummings track and field coach Donnie Davis said.
There was nothing automatic about reaching this point for the 2025-26 set-up. There are three classifications represented in this conference, ranging from Class 4-A schools Cummings and Graham to Class 6-A schools Southern Alamance and Williams. In between are Eastern Alamance, Southeast Alamance, and Western Alamance in Class 5-A.
The first two drafts unveiled by the NCHSAA during the realignment process had five of the county schools together. Cummings and Graham were pegged for a more western-leaning circuit that extended to Winston-Salem.
Todd Davis, athletics director for ABSS, helped push the idea of having Cummings and Graham with the other schools in the county. Cummings and Graham were on board with that as well, pretty much from the start of the process.
“Our biggest thing was the business side of the conference,” Graham athletics director Kyle Ward said. “There’s no way we’re going to make any money (in the previous conference proposals).”
Ward even envisioned a doomsday scenario if Graham was part of earlier proposed scenarios.
“I was afraid there’s not going to be athletics at Graham in another year,” he said.
Time for a field trip
Prior to what became the third and final release of conference alignments, Todd Davis, Ward, Cummings athletics director Cherie Pettiford, and Revonda Johnson, then chief academic officer for ABSS, accepted the option of an in-person meeting with NCHSAA decision makers during the appeals process.
So in Chapel Hill, they laid out their case again.
“We basically presented the same information we did the first time,” Pettiford said last winter, though she hasn’t responded to recent interview requests. “It just made sense for travel. Less lost instructional time.”
The geographics were at the core, Pettiford said.
“Those were the key factors for us,” she said.
But NCHSAA conferences aren’t created in a vacuum. If a school or two is shifted from one potential conference, there’s a fallout on how that impacts other proposed conferences.
One area that worked in favor of the ABSS contingent was that with the eight-classification format there would be far more split conferences. It was increasingly difficult for schools within a single classification to be grouped together.
Todd Davis said in terms of Cummings and Graham, it boiled down to economics.
“We told (the NCHSAA officials) about the transportation expenses,” he said. “How that would take away from what we’re able to provide our students. Competition had nothing to do with it.”
Ward and Todd Davis said Graham and Cummings can each save at least $10,000 in the athletics budget with what has become the newly-adapted conference. It’s not just reduced expenses, but anticipated increases in ticket revenues by playing more nearby teams.
“Todd Davis did a phenomenal job showing that,” he said.
Another topic presented was there should be fewer instances where athletes will be excused early from classes in order for teams to travel to conference competitions.
Southeast Alamance spent its first two years in the same conference as Cummings and Graham. That league stretched from Caswell County to Moore County.
So the Stallions, who’ve grown in enrollment to be more suitable companions with the biggest schools in the county, were already expecting reduced travel expenses.
“Our travel bill will be significantly less,” Southeast athletics director B.J. Condron said.
That’s what Todd Davis sees as well, combined with better gate receipts.
“That’s a lot of revenue we’ll be able to keep within Alamance County,” he said.
On the outside
There wasn’t resistance from schools such as Winston-Salem Carver and Walkertown about losing Cummings and Graham as potential conference colleagues. Plus, Rockingham County is now part of the mix with the schools abandoned by Cummings and Graham, an apparent satisfaction after Rockingham County had rebuffed a proposal that had it linked to Alamance County’s larger schools.
But not all schools are thrilled.
Orange wanted to be a part of the conference with the Alamance County schools, pushing hard for that to happen. Traction for that to happen became slippery because Cedar Ridge, which like Orange has a Hillsborough address, wasn’t on board with that.
Former Williams baseball coach Jason Knapp is athletics director at Orange. He sought for the Panthers to stay linked with the Alamance County schools for travel and competitive reasons.
“It’s just beneficial,” Knapp said.
But that didn’t work out for Orange, signaling that NCHSAA couldn’t appease all the appeals.
Meanwhile, teams will have to fill non-conference dates, sometimes meaning up to approximately half of a team’s schedule.
While Cummings and Graham faced off against larger county schools in a few non-conference competitions, those matchups won’t be available for non-league endeavors. So it means Alamance County schools will have a large diet of non-conference competitions that might require slightly more travel.
The good thing is that Eastern Guilford and Orange, prior to recent league alignments, have long been frequent and practical non-league opponents for Alamance County teams.
Plus, it became clear to Ward and Southern Alamance athletics director Stephanie Smith that relationships built during past conference alignments can be used in setting up non-conference portions of schedules.
There will be likely tweaks when it comes to scheduling. For instance, Southeast has held a holiday basketball tournament (for boys and girls) the past two seasons, so developing a tournament field could take more work.
Generally, the composition for teams in such tournaments are designed to avoid conference matchups, so past participating teams are bound to rethink which holiday events to enter.
“It will make it challenging,” Condron said.
Check the calendar
An unintended bonus of having a conference nearly entirely of schools from Alamance County is matching school calendars.
“That solves a lot of problems,” Todd Davis said.
This is no small item because for years there have been scheduling headaches for athletics directors within ABSS when trying to accommodate various schedules because on other districts with different calendars for first-semester exams, winter breaks, and spring breaks. And it complicates matters when a school district cancels classes or activities for weather-related reasons, while other conference members are in districts without restrictions on certain days or weeks.
The former Mid-Carolina Conference had schools from four counties. The Central 3-A Conference had three counties involved.
“Which makes me even more happy that we’re all in the same conference,” Todd Davis said.
As a plus, Person County’s calendar often aligns with ABSS.
Who can compete?
While there has been universal acceptance and considerable applause from around the county regarding the conference configuration, there’s a topic that can’t be dismissed.
In most sports in recent years, Cummings and Graham haven’t demonstrated that they’ll be competitive with the larger Alamance County schools.
“We’re going to have our work cut out for us,” Graham’s Ward said. “It will be an uphill battle. At some point, you’ve got to get better.”
Todd Davis acknowledged the challenges for those schools, but he said those can be overcome.
“They’ve got the pieces to compete,” he said. “It’s going to be kind of a climate change for what they’ve been against. Hopefully, it’s one of those iron sharpens iron type of things.”
Cummings and Graham haven’t fielded teams in several sports such as swimming and diving and boys’ lacrosse, while in other sports Cummings, in particular, hasn’t had enough recent interest or program infrastructure to play on the varsity level in golf, tennis, volleyball, softball, and baseball.
Donnie Davis, long a fixture at Cummings and who watched his son and daughter excel and go on to notable collegiate careers on the Division I level, said he embraces the chance to compete against more area schools. He said there needs to be changes as well.
“I love it,” Donnie Davis said. “It’s going to be better overall. But we got to get better. . . In spring, we only have track and girls’ soccer. That’s crazy. You got to build it.”
There’s also the caveat about participation numbers. Cummings has held steady and often excelled in football in recent seasons, but that’s not the case for Graham.
“A sport like football, you’ve got to have numbers,” said Southeast principal Eric Yarbrough, whose school attracted football players even with a limited senior class in the first year.
Todd Davis said he hopes that athletics participation grows from within the Cummings and Graham student bodies. Potential athletes might feel more in tune with the conference because they know athletes from other schools in the county, he said.
Still, the wins and losses will be worth noting.
“In some sports, they’re not going to match up,” Todd Davis said. “That’s all about challenging themselves.”
With the competition factor in mind, Ward said he was intentional in arranging Graham’s non-conference schedules, especially in football and basketball. The Red Devils’ 2025 non-conference football opponents are Chatham Central, Cedar Ridge, and East Chapel Hill – all with recent struggles as well.
“With the non-conference, we’re trying to get some confidence,” Ward said.
What’s to come?
While win-loss records and finances will be scrutinized, there’s also the potential fallout for the postseason. It’s unclear what the NCHSAA structure is going to mean when it comes to producing state championships.
In theory, three football teams from the county could be crowned champions because the Mid-Carolina Conference includes three classifications. In other sports, Alamance County could reap even more with Clover Garden and River Mill in Class 1-A.
In the short term, eyes will be on the Ratings Percentage Index, which will be used exclusively by the NCHSAA in determining playoff seedings and brackets in team sports.
“The crazy thing, it will help our RPI,” Ward said in terms of Graham’s possible place in the pecking order.
Yet for Cummings and Graham, there are bound to be more close-to-home considerations. Ward said Graham is trying to gauge interest for all sports because if the school can’t field a team in a sport that will impact his county colleagues in terms of scheduling.
Ward said he’s mindful of “not holding those conference teams hostage.”
Yarbrough, a past principal at Eastern Alamance, said the possibilities related to the new conference should have more people paying attention. Going into this school year, Southeast has only played three of the other county teams in football.
Now, the Stallions have six such matchups on the schedule.
“Excited about the new conference,” Yarbrough said. “I’m sure we’ll have big crowds. You just think about the intensity of some of the games. . . I think we’ll have more positives than negatives.”
