The 2023-24 high school sports seasons are about to begin, and fans of four of our local football teams will notice very quickly that those schools will be facing a much wider variety of teams this year than they have in the past.
That’s because the old Mountain League merged into the Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference, and our local teams — Bellefonte, Bald Eagle Area, Penns Valley and Philipsburg-Osceola — will be playing schools from a much bigger league and a much larger geographical area.
The conference includes 15 schools from the existing LHAC plus the seven new entries from the Mountain League, for a total of 22 high schools.
In football, the conference will be divided into four sections: West 1, West 2, East 1, East 2.
The West 1 schools are Somerset, Westmont, Richland, Johnstown and Bishop McCord.
West 2 has Penn Cambria, Bedford, Chestnut Ridge, Central Cambria and Forest Hills.
The East 1 schools are Central, Huntingdon, Bishop Guilfoyle, Bellwood-Antis and Tyrone, and the East 2 schools are BEA, Philipsburg-Osceola, Bellefonte, Penns Valley and Clearfield.
Each team will play a nine-game schedule that includes all the teams in its section, three from the other section and one each from the opposite geographic section.
For example, BEA this season will play P-O, Bellefonte, PV and Clearfield from the East 2; Guilfoyle, Tyrone and Bellwood from East 1; and Johnstown and Central Cambria from the West.
The 10th game will be determined by the ranking of each team in its geographic section, 1 to 10. So the No. 7 team from the East will play the No. 7 team from the West. Tiebreakers and other conditions are in place to ensure that a team doesn’t play another one twice.
The East will be the home team in odd years, and the West in even years.
BEA, therefore, will play a West team with the same ranking at home this season on Oct. 27.
All four of the Centre County teams will be diving right into the new league beginning on Aug. 25 with Bellefonte, it seems, having the most challenging start, at least on paper.
The Raiders open with Central at home on Aug. 25, travel to Chestnut Ridge on September 1 and then entertain Guilfoyle at home on Sept. 8.
BEA will have Guilfoyle at home, Central Cambria away, and Penns Valley away on those same dates.
P-O takes on Huntingdon at home, Penn Cambria away and Clearfield away, while Penns Valley sees Bellwood at home, Bedford away and BEA at home.
It will all seem very different, but many players, coaches and fans are looking forward to the new rivalries.
Philipsburg-Osceola High School Athletic Director Kelly Kephart Rees thinks the new conference play has many positives for all sports.
“We are looking forward to the many new challenges and rivalries in the new LHAC,” she said. “We will still be playing our old Mountain League teams every year, and we are adding many top-tier opponents from the Laurel Highlands League. It is a win-win when you look at the number and the quality of the schools we will be competing with.
“And of course we always put our athletes first, and we think they are going to benefit tremendously from the competition in the LHAC,” Rees said. “And these are the teams we normally play in the districts, and many of the games will be previews of D6 playoff games.”
All of the football games are scheduled for Friday nights beginning at 7 p.m.
