There will be some new destinations and opponents for the local schools in the upcoming high school athletic season.
The PVIAC released its realignments for the winter season, and Franklin County and North Quabbin schools will all have a bit of a different landscape to traverse when action begins in December.
With the dissolution of Turners Falls High School on the hockey scene, lone local team Greenfield High School will be a part of the new Wright Division. The nine-team Fay-Wright Division from this past winter, where the Green Wave finished sixth, was split into the Fay and Wright Divisions.
A big addition to the leagues will be the inclusion of the Berkshire County schools, meaning Greenfield will have some lengthy commutes for road games this winter. Familiar foes Belchertown High School, Easthampton High School and St. Mary’s Parish School, all Fay-Wright teams from a year ago, will join the Wave in the Wright, but those four schools will be joined by Berkshire newcomers Taconic High and Mount Everett Regional schools. A potential Wave road game to play Mt. Everett, of Sheffield, is 90 miles one-way.
The Fay Division will feature Ludlow High School, Chicopee High School, Amherst Regional High School, Chicopee Comprehensive High School, South Hadley High School and Wahconah Regional High School.
The girls’ basketball landscape will change dramatically, as the Franklin County League will see local teams spread across three divisions. Joining the North and South will be a new West Division, with 15 teams split into the three divisions as a result.
The FCL North will look somewhat similar to this past winter, when it was won by Mahar Regional School with a perfect 8-0 record. Mahar, Athol High School, Frontier Regional School and Hopkins Academy are all back in the division, though Easthampton High School will shift to the West. That opened up a spot for a heavyweight addition however, as South champion Greenfield will move to the North and battle with the likes of Mahar for league supremacy.
With Greenfield out of the South, the new-look format there will be highlighted by local teams Pioneer Valley Regional School and Turners Falls. While both were in the South a year ago, they’ll be joined by a trio of newcomers in Ware High School, Southwick Regional High School and Putnam Vocational Technical Academy. Ware captured the Franklin East a year ago, edging Southwick by a game. Putnam moves up from the Tri-County League North, where it was the co-champion a year ago with Springfield School of Science & Technology.
That leaves the Franklin West, where the lone local team will be Mohawk Trail Regional High School. Joining the Warriors, who moved from the South, will be Easthampton, moving from the North, Smith Academy, also moving from the South with Mohawk, and McCann Technical School and Pope Francis High School, which were the bottom-dwellers in the East a year ago.
Franklin County Technical School will stay in the Tri-County League North, where it will be joined by Pioneer Valley Christian School, Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School, Sci-Tech, Duggan Academy and Renaissance School.
On the boys’ basketball side of things, the Hampshire League will see a shift that splits the nine-team league into two, five-team divisions — the Hampshire North and South. In the North, Mohawk, Greenfield, Frontier and Athol are joined by Smith Academy. The South will feature Mahar, Turners Falls, Pioneer and defending WMass Div. IV champion Hopkins Academy. Making up the final team is the lone newcomer to the league, Belchertown High School, which went 0-20 last winter in the Suburban League made up of mostly Division I schools.
FC Tech remains in the TCL North, where it will battle with McCann Tech, Hampden Charter School of Science, PVCS, Duggan and Bay State Academy.