With a new year comes new changes, all sporting departments will have a particularly large change of scenery as HHS has moved from Conference 29 of Class 3A West to Conference 23 of Class 4A North. Alignment of schools in classes and conferences will be based on both their location in Virginia and their enrollment numbers. Schools will change conferences if their growth in enrollment becomes much greater than the opposing teams in the conference. Conference 23 consists of Charlottesville, Fluvanna, Louisa County, Amherst County, Harrisonburg and John Handley.

“The idea behind alignment is that you are competing against similar sized schools, but with the growth that has been seen, you could have a very large AA school and a small AA school competing in the same district or region. So the realignment is meant to better place those schools relative to one another,” Athletic Director Darrell Wilson said.

Although HHS will be playing bigger schools, there will still be a Valley District championship according to regular season standings for certain sports.

“The District system remains for all schools to form the basic structure of scheduling regular-season contests. We kept the Valley District because we felt it was important to maintain traditions and to keep the bonds between our schools,” Wilson said.

With the change in place the higher seeded teams will host the lower seeded teams, meaning there will not be a neutral site, or a “super site”. The lower ranked HHS is, the further we have to travel for post season games.

“The key will be living in this new system for a few years and seeing how things shake out. We’ve always been very competitive in the Valley District, but it will take a couple of years to be able to make a better statement on where we stand with our new competition. We hope to be part of that tough competition for the other schools,” Wilson said.