The member schools of the Northern 10 Athletic Conference — Carey, Upper Sandusky, Mohawk, Seneca East, Bucyrus, Colonel Crawford, Buckeye Central, and Wynford — are proud to officially welcome six new member schools to the league: Hopewell-Loudon, Calvert, New Riegel, Old Fort, Willard, and Lucas. These institutions will begin official league competition this coming fall.

With this exciting expansion, there will be a change in how the league operates some league sports.

Under the new 14-school structure, the league will organize several sports’ seasons into two geographic divisions that will include divisional and cross-over divisional contests.  The divisions are:

  • West Division: Carey, Calvert, Hopewell-Loudon, Mohawk, New Riegel, Old Fort, and Upper Sandusky.
  • East Division: Buckeye Central, Bucyrus, Colonel Crawford, Lucas, Seneca East, Willard, and Wynford.

To answer the questions of fans, parents, and followers of the league on how league sports will operate, the Northern 10 Athletic Conference will be releasing information on each sport’s format over the next few weeks.  Our first release covered the competitive model for football, and this release explains how competition in volleyball will be conducted.

Volleyball

Volleyball will utilize the new East/West Divisional Format:

  • Match Scheduling: League games are scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday nights, with Saturday mornings utilized as needed. Weekday Freshmen contests begin at 5:00 PM, with JV and Varsity matches following exactly twenty (20) minutes after the conclusion of the preceding contest. If no Freshmen game is scheduled, JV begins at 5:30 PM. Saturday contests will begin at 10:00 AM.
  • Season Play: Each school will play a Home/Home divisional schedule alongside a pre-determined number of crossover matches against the opposite division (crossover matches do not count toward divisional records).
  • Championship Match: The final match of the league season will feature a showcase of like seeds from the East and West divisions (e.g., #1 West vs. #1 East, #2 West vs. #2 East) until every seed is matched. The winner of the #1 seed matchup will be crowned the Northern 10 Conference champion.
  • Hosting: Host sites for the final seed matches will alternate divisions annually. Because fall sports determine the home division based on the year that ends the school year, the West division will host the home games for this upcoming season (as the school year concludes in an even year, 2026).

Tie-Breakers: Multi-team ties for divisional seeding will be broken sequentially using: (A) Head-to-Head match record, (B) Head-to-Head set record, (C) Match record vs. next highest place team in the division, (D) Set record vs. next highest place team, (E) Downward continuation, and (F) RPI Ranking.

Football

Football will operate entirely on a competitive balance model rather than divisional standings:

  • Schedule Structure: Each team will play an eight-game conference schedule and two out-of-conference games, following a two-year Home and Home model.
  • The Model: Teams are ranked 1 through 12 based on their conference record over the past two years. For this initial two-year cycle, overall records from the previous four years were utilized for the calculation.
  • Tier Formatting: Once ranked, teams are divided into four tiers based on records (top 3 teams, next 3 teams, next 3 teams, and next 3 teams). To maintain scheduling equity, a Tier 1 team and a Tier 4 team will only play one opponent from the corresponding opposite tier over the two-year rotation. For example, the team with the best record will only have one of the Tier 4 teams on its schedule.  After the Tier 1/Tier 4 matchups are determined, the schedule is randomly generated and adjusted to balance home/away matchups.
  • Champion: The league champion(s) will be determined based on overall conference record.