Cedar Shoals remains in region 4-A Area 8 as it shrinks from 11 to 7 schools

Every other year, the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) realigns the regions and classifications for high school athletics. This process involves moving teams into higher or lower classifications based on student enrollment within the eight regions based on their location.

For the 2024-25 school year, Cedar Shoals’ current region, 4-A Area 8, will see major changes. The area has gone from 11 schools to only seven, as Cedar stays in the region with East Forsyth, Madison County, North Oconee and Walnut Grove. The two new schools joining are Flowery Branch, which was in the region as recently as 2022, and Eastside, which shared a region with Cedar from 2002-08.

“It’s good to face teams that you’ve played a lot,” boys basketball head coach and Athletic Director L’Dreco Thomas said. “It can help establish rivalries, fill up the bleachers and improve the atmosphere.”

The teams leaving the region were all located in the Gainesville or Buford areas, with East Hall, North Hall, Cherokee Bluff, Chestatee and Johnson moving down to 3-A, and Seckinger moving up to 5-A.

“Top to bottom, the region we’re coming out of is very tough,” Thomas said. “We’re replacing a high number of competitive teams with two new competitive teams.”

The closest schools are North Oconee and Madison County, being 15 and 20 miles away from Cedar Shoals respectively. The furthest school is East Forsyth, being approximately 60 miles from Cedar. 

When looking at individual sports, each sport sees the landscape change. Whether it’s powerhouses that dominated region play leaving or teams toward the bottom of the standings moving out, things will look very different over the next two years. 

In football, only one of the four playoff teams for the region will be leaving, as North Hall was the region’s four-seed in the state playoffs. At the bottom of the standings, the two worst teams in the region are also leaving, as East Hall (1-7 in region play) and Chestatee (0-8 in region play) will be moving to 3A Area 8 and 3A Area 6 respectively.

Still, the addition of Eastside and Flowery Branch will make this a very difficult region. Eastside came off a strong 8-4 season, where they finished as runner-up in the region and finished the year ranked 12th in 5-A according to MaxPreps. Flowery Branch, despite a disappointing past two seasons, has been a consistently strong program since their first season in 2002.

Baseball is where the region takes its biggest hits, as three of the top four teams in the region standings are leaving. First place Cherokee Bluff, third place Seckinger, and fourth place North Hall are all on the way out, with second place North Oconee staying put.

Eastside and Flowery Branch both finished 12-14 in baseball. Flowery Branch, however, is 8-4 in region play and ranked 17th in 5A, while Eastside is 6-6 in region play and ranked 23rd in 5A.

In boy’s soccer, the Region will be losing one of the biggest powerhouses in the state in Johnson. Coming in to replace them, Eastside went 9-7-1 and lost in the first round of the state playoffs, while Flowery Branch came in at 4-11-1 and missed the playoffs.

A smaller region opens the door for more schools to make the playoffs. In all sports, four teams from each region make the playoffs, meaning that 4/9 of teams made the playoffs in football, and 4/11 teams made the playoffs in every other sport. With the new region only having seven schools, that means 4/7 of schools will make the playoffs in every sport.

With a smaller region schedule, teams will also increase the number of non-region games. This schedule means more opportunities for Cedar to schedule old rivals, Athens-area schools they don’t play often, or schools that they’ve never played.

“It’s good to know that we’ll be able to schedule teams that we used to normally play,” Thomas said.