The Northeastern Conference will have a new alignment for football when the 2015 season kicks off in the first week of September.
The return of Saugus to full conference status after playing this past season as an independent has caused a wholesale shuffling of the deck, resulting in the league?s two divisions being realigned based on enrollment and power.
The North division will now include Lynn English, Lynn Classical, Beverly, Marblehead, Peabody and Danvers. The two Lynn schools along with Beverly and Marblehead are holdovers from last season, while Peabody and Danvers move in from the South.
Consequently, Salem and Revere are the two schools that move down in the new alignment to join Saugus, Swampscott, Winthrop and Gloucester in the South.
The realignment is expected to bring more parity to a league that saw eight of 11 teams (excluding Saugus, which qualified for the Division 4 North playoffs as an independent) reach the playoffs but had only Peabody, Marblehead and Winthrop do so with winning records.
For Peabody head coach Mark Bettencourt, the change in alignment represents a step forward for the conference.
?At the end of the season, the coaches had talked about how to find a compromise between power and enrollment,” Bettencourt said. “We wanted to keep the integrity of the league and at the same time make it better. I think this does that.”
The league also has changed how it will determine its automatic qualifiers for the playoffs. The conference has elected to go to a point system similar to that used by the Catholic Conference and Catholic Central League to select their automatic bids.
The move is precipitated by the possibility that Thanksgiving Day games could have an effect on who wins the league title and a desire to prevent some rival teams from having to play each other as many as three times.
?(Playing someone three times) was crazy. I think that some teams had to do that last season and that?s not very good,” Bettencourt said. “For us, playing a couple of new teams is something that we feel like we?re ready to take on.”
In 2014, Saugus appeared to be on the outside looking in because it did not have an automatic bid into the playoffs. But the CCL?s point system — used because of Thanksgiving games between league teams — advanced Bishop Fenwick and Cardinal Spellman into the playoffs, giving Saugus the final at-large spot over Arlington Catholic.
Winthrop, Revere, English and Classical will play crossover games against the NEC/South in the third week of the season. The move will prevent teams from having to play each other once before the playoffs and then again on Thanksgiving Day.
In the case of English and Classical, there could have been three possible meetings because both schools are part of the Division 2 North sectional.?This is a win-win situation for each program and it?s good for the league,” Bettencourt said. “We, as a program, are excited to play some new teams. We?ve never gone against Marblehead and Beverly so that will be fun.”