Cedar Shoals moves to Region 8-6A for 2026-27
Every two years the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) reexamines school population growth and where they are geographically placed in Georgia to update region placements for athletics. For 2024-25 and 2025-26, Cedar Shoals was in Region 8-4A which consists of East Forsyth, Eastside, Flowery Branch, Madison County, North Oconee and Walnut Grove. GHSA originally placed Cedar into Region 8-5A to begin in fall 2026, but Athletic Director L’Dreco Thomas petitioned that Cedar move to Region 8-6A instead of going to Region 8-5A.
GHSA approved the petition, so Cedar will move to Region 8-6A along with Clarke Central, Loganville, Jackson County, Walnut Grove and Apalachee. Thomas decided that it would be best for Cedar’s sports to go into 8-6A instead of 8-5A due to the competition and geographical placement of the other teams, so he petitioned successfully to move up a region..
“We decided that we wanted to petition up to play in 8-6A based on it being a better region for us, better travel and I think it’s a more competitive balance for all of our sports in the region that we were coming from. We made the decision that we felt was best for us,” Thomas said.
One challenge in Region 8-6A will be the competition’s enrollment size compared to Cedar. The Jaguars have one of the lowest total enrollment figures in the region. Varsity boys soccer head coach Conor Naughton believes that being in a larger region will help his team advance.
“For the most part, schools and bigger classifications often have, on average, the strongest team, strongest programs, because they have the biggest pool of students to pull their athletes from. We always try to schedule a couple schools in higher regions because you’re only going to get better by playing better opponents. I think it’ll kind of force us to improve and to rise to the occasion,” Naughton said.
Larger schools have a greater pool of students to pull athletes from. Softball head coach Logan Garrett points out Loganville as a formidable opponent because of the stronger athletes they have on their team.
“In softball it’s not about the size of the school, but the population that they draw from. So if they have a strong travel club program near them, like Loganville does, then they probably just have stronger players overall. So I just anticipate that we’re going to go up against some stronger pitching and maybe some more home run hitters,” Garrett said.
The region assignment is not the only thing that will change. Additionally, the way that playoffs are set up will evolve. GHSA will now use a points-based formula to determine the playoff seedings. With this new formula only the top team in the region will have a playoff spot. This is very different from the way it has been, where the top four teams in each region qualify for the playoffs.
“If we had this system over the past decade or so, we probably would have made the playoffs a lot more just because of how stacked our region has been. That’s something that is encouraging, actually. It’s going to be very intense, it’s going to be very competitive. But that’s been the case with all of our region so far, and now knowing that as far as playoffs go, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to finish in the top four. As long as we’re playing good teams and playing well, we still have the chance to qualify for playoffs,” Naughton said.
