By Gene Galin
Pittsboro, NC – A new regional sports livestream podcast launched on August 15 with a debate that reaches far beyond scores and schedules: Should North Carolina allow students whose schools cannot field a team to compete through cooperative athletic programs with another school?
That question dominated the August 15 premiere of “AD Huddle,” a livestreamed podcast featuring Northwood High School athletic director Cameron Vernon and Southeast Alamance High School athletic director B.J. Condron. During the podcast I produced, the two administrators argued that a properly limited co-op policy could preserve opportunities for students without requiring them to transfer, abandon their home school or give up a sport.
Their discussion arrived as Graham High School decided not to field varsity football in 2026 because of low participation and player-safety concerns. Graham athletic director Kenroy Wallace confirmed the decision to HighSchoolOT, while the Alamance News reported that slightly more than 20 players had attended most practices and that the roster would have been composed largely of freshmen and sophomores. Graham plans to play junior varsity football instead.
The local case gave urgency to an issue Cameron has pursued through formal channels. Minutes from the North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s December 2025 Board of Directors meeting show that its policy committee reviewed a request for a cooperative-team agreement covering schools unable to field a full, competitive team because of participation, enrollment or other challenges. The proposal did not advance from the committee.
“At the end of the day,” Vernon said during the podcast, decision-makers should ask, “What is best for kids?”
A podcast built around the athletic director’s job
The debut episode opened less like a formal policy forum than a conversation between two longtime educators. Vernon and Condron traded jokes about their coaching records and radio voices, then explained how years in education led them to athletic administration.
Vernon, a western Pennsylvania native, said he is entering his 22nd year of teaching and coaching in North Carolina. He recalled attending Dean Smith’s basketball camp as a teenager, later earning a master’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and moving from teaching and coaching into athletic administration in 2015.
Condron, a Goldsboro native, said he is beginning his fourth year as Southeast Alamance’s athletic director and has roughly two decades in education. Before becoming an administrator, he coached basketball for 10 years at Orange High School, where he competed against Vernon.
The idea for the show developed, Vernon said, while both men spent time mowing athletic fields and listening to podcasts. They saw room for an ongoing program in which athletic directors could exchange practices, explain their work to the public and give colleagues another source of professional support outside the state athletic directors’ annual conference.
“A lot of ADs are kind of just thrown into the job to figure it out for themselves,” Condron said.
That observation set the show’s broader purpose. Athletic directors occupy a position that blends event management, student services, personnel supervision, facilities work, safety planning, budgeting, public communication and crisis response. Our premiere episode illustrated that range by moving from lightning delays and metal detectors to participation trends, transfer rules and the emotional value of high school sports.
Vernon said veteran administrators frequently learn by adapting ideas from colleagues. This podcast, in his view, can extend that exchange throughout the year. Condron added that the job can become stale without new ideas and trusted people willing to test them.
Fall arrives with familiar logistical pressure
Before turning to cooperative teams, the two ADs reviewed the opening of fall sports at their schools.
Condron described Southeast Alamance’s first home volleyball match, its football scrimmage and “Meet the Stallions” event. A lightning delay complicated the scrimmage while staff members were also learning how to use newly installed metal detectors. In the rush, Condron said, he realized the concession stand’s cash box had been forgotten.
Athletic directors plan for schedules, staffing, security and severe weather, then adjust when several problems arrive simultaneously. Condron said the period before a game can become a “scurry,” with the event itself bringing at least some relief even though administrators rarely sit and watch from beginning to end.
Northwood’s early fall schedule included volleyball, soccer and tennis, with golf and cross country meets approaching. The school also hosted a large Jack Shaner Jamboree with 10 teams. Vernon watched storms to the north and hoped the lightning would not move toward Pittsboro. Southeast Alamance experienced the opposite frustration: enough lightning to halt activity but not enough rain to help dry fields.
Those kinds of things matter to the co-op discussion because any combined arrangement would require more than changing a line in a rulebook. It would add transportation, supervision, communication, scheduling and financial responsibilities to departments already managing unpredictable conditions.
Graham’s decision brings a statewide question close to home
Graham’s cancellation of varsity football provided the episode’s immediate context. The school’s situation is not evidence that a co-op would automatically have been feasible; another school would have to agree, transportation would have to be workable, and a state policy would have to establish eligibility and competitive safeguards.
It does, however, show the central problem Vernon and Condron want policymakers to address: Interested students can lose a season when their school lacks enough participants to operate safely.
The Alamance News reported that Graham’s decision followed low turnout and safety concerns. Coach Mykel Searcy said a roster of about 30 would have been preferable. Rather than place a young, thin roster into a varsity schedule, the school chose a junior varsity season.
Football attracts the most public attention because Friday nights can involve marching bands, cheerleaders, student sections, homecoming ceremonies, senior recognition, concessions and community traditions. The loss of a varsity team therefore reaches beyond the players.
“What’s the band going to do on Friday night if there’s no football?” Vernon asked. “Are you going to have a homecoming court?”
Condron agreed that football’s place in community life magnifies the impact, but both men stressed that low participation affects many sports. Golf, tennis, swimming, wrestling and lacrosse can disappear with less publicity, leaving a smaller number of interested students with the same basic problem.
The NCHSAA reported in 2024 that women’s golf participation had risen 12% year over year, to 1,573 athletes, and that 282 member schools sponsored women’s golf teams in 2023. Even with that growth, sponsorship remains uneven across the state.
In the podcast, Vernon cited figures compiled for his co-op proposal indicating that substantial shares of NCHSAA schools did not field teams in several sports during 2024-25.
Condron cautioned that the absence of a team does not always prove unmet demand. A school may lack a facility, may never have sponsored the sport or may have too few interested students to justify a program. Still, he said, a school with two or three interested athletes may be able to join with a nearby program if rules permit.
What a cooperative team would — and would not — do
Under the model described by the two ADs, a co-op would be available only when a school could not independently field a team because of low participation or a related limitation. Students would remain enrolled at their home school but practice and compete through an approved arrangement with another school.
Vernon used a hypothetical girls lacrosse partnership between Southeast Alamance and Northwood. If the schools were geographically closer, Southeast Alamance students interested in a sport their school could not sustain might travel to Northwood for practices and games while continuing their classes and other school relationships at Southeast.
The concept is different from unrestricted athletic transfer rules. It is also different from allowing two healthy programs to merge their best players in pursuit of a championship.
“This isn’t something that’s put in place so that B.J. and I can talk and say, ‘Hey, let’s make this super team,’” Vernon said.
That distinction is central to the proposal. They said any policy would need eligibility thresholds, approval procedures and competitive adjustments. Vernon also said participating programs should use a no-cut rule so that students from a partner school do not displace athletes at the host school merely because the combined pool is stronger.
Other states demonstrate that co-ops can be regulated around access rather than competitive advantage. A National Federation of State High School Associations article has described cooperative programs as a tool for keeping athletics available at small schools.
Nebraska’s cooperative-sponsorship guidance, for example, says a proposal should not reduce participation in either school, should not combine enrollment for classification, and directs schools to settle costs, gate receipts, transportation, practice sites and team identity before approval.
Those provisions do not supply a ready-made North Carolina rule, but they identify the questions a state policy would have to answer.
North Carolina’s current rule leaves little room
As of the 2026-27 school year, North Carolina’s framework does not generally allow the arrangement Vernon and Condron described.
The NCHSAA’s July 2026 orientation for new athletic directors states that a student attending a school supervised by a local board of education may participate only for the school to which the student is assigned. The same presentation says a membership entity may not use students from two or more regularly constituted high schools that offer athletic programs to form a “composite team.”
That language explains why families cannot simply decide that a Graham athlete will play at another Alamance County school while remaining enrolled at Graham. A transfer may be possible under local assignment policies, but it changes the student’s academic setting and school affiliation. It can also affect other teams at the school the student leaves.
Condron recalled an Orange County situation in which seniors were allowed to transfer when Cedar Ridge did not field varsity football. Only a small number did so, he said, because participation required students to leave a school where they had already spent several years.
For a senior, the choice can be severe: remain with teachers, friends and activities at the home school or transfer for one final athletic season. A multisport athlete’s move can also weaken basketball, wrestling, baseball, track or another program at the original school.
The co-op proposal seeks to separate athletic access from academic reassignment. Students would remain students first, Vernon said, while receiving a narrowly defined exception in a sport their school could not offer.
The NCHSAA considered that idea in December 2025. The policy committee reviewed a request allowing two or more schools to combine programs in specified sports when one or more could not field a full team. The minutes say only that the item “did not come out of committee.”
In the future, we may want to examine the role of State Board of Education rules and whether a pilot, waiver structure or legislative change would be required.
Participation carries educational value, but the research needs context
Vernon and Condron framed sports as part of education, not an activity separate from it. Condron said athletes tend to attend class more consistently, earn stronger grades and learn to handle adversity. He also said students often behave better when they belong to a team or school organization.
National research supports an association between school activity participation and positive academic outcomes, although it does not prove that playing a sport causes better grades in every case. The NFHS’s “Case for High School Activities” cites studies finding higher average grade-point averages and lower absenteeism among activity participants.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention review found that nearly all measured relationships between extracurricular physical activity and academic performance were positive or neutral, but it also noted that the studies on interscholastic sports were descriptive.
That distinction matters. Students who join teams may already differ from nonparticipants in motivation, family support, health, school attachment or other ways. Still, the evidence gives weight to the administrators’ argument that athletic access can reinforce engagement with school.
Cameron and BJ also emphasized less measurable benefits: learning to respond to defeat, working within a team, accepting correction and developing relationships with adults. Condron said success is not limited to a scoreboard. Administrators get to watch students mature over four years and respond constructively to adversity.
For Vernon, the evidence of impact often arrives later — in college graduations, weddings, careers and messages from former students. Those moments, he said, allow educators to hope they contributed “one or two things” to the adults their students became.
Competitive balance would be the hardest policy test
The strongest objection anticipated by Cameron and BJ is that a cooperative team could draw from two enrollments while competing against programs based on one school’s population. Without an adjustment, a combined program could have a larger pool of potential athletes than its classification peers.
Vernon said other states address that concern by adding all or part of the partner school’s enrollment to the host school’s figure. He offered the Northwood-Southeast Alamance hypothetical to show why the adjustment could discourage opportunistic partnerships: A lower-classification host could be pushed into competition with much larger schools.
Policies vary. Nebraska combines the participating schools’ enrollments for the sponsored activity. New York applies a graduated addition when combined teams advance beyond sectional competition. Michigan limits cooperative programs by combined enrollment and, in some sports, by the number of schools sponsoring the activity. The differences show that there is no single national formula.
Ohio has moved in a related but distinct direction. Its Student Athlete Mobility Act, effective during the 2026-27 school year, requires districts to establish a process through which a public-school student may petition to join an activity at a neighboring school when the home school does not offer it. Approval from both sides is required.
The Ohio approach expands individual access rather than necessarily creating a formally combined team, but it demonstrates that enrollment-at-one-school rules can be modified without establishing unrestricted athletic free agency.
The North Carolina proposal would need to define what counts as an unavailable program. A school that cancels a varsity season but sponsors junior varsity raises a different question from one that offers no team at all.
Policymakers would also need to decide whether a co-op could include schools in separate districts, how close they must be, whether participation should be annual, and what happens if the home school rebuilds its own team.
Vernon and Condron favored year-to-year agreements. The long-term goal, they said, should be restoration of an independent program whenever possible. Students who continue playing can recruit classmates, post about positive experiences and help build enough interest for their school to restart a team.
“Sometimes you just need that spark to get that flame started,” Condron said.
The practical questions are extensive
Even if state policy changes, no school would be obligated to accept another’s athletes under the model discussed on the show. Both schools would have to determine that the arrangement served their students.
Transportation would be one of the first barriers. Would the district provide a bus, would families drive, or would licensed students transport themselves? Who would supervise students between dismissal and practice? What happens when the schools follow different calendars or dismiss at different times?
Money would be another. Schools would need to allocate coaching stipends, equipment, uniforms, officials, facility expenses, insurance and gate receipts. If each school entered the agreement with an experienced coach, administrators would have to decide who leads the team and whether the budget can support two stipends.
Identity also matters. Which mascot, colors, and name would appear on the uniform? Where would home contests be played? How would senior nights and homecoming ceremonies recognize students from both communities?
Vernon pointed to the football partnership between Sharpsville and West Middlesex in western Pennsylvania. When the co-op was proposed in 2021, each school board and the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association had to approve it. Low roster numbers were named as the reason for joining.
The partnership has provided a model for sharing games and preserving community participation, though its history also shows that agreements can change over time and require continued local support.
Cameron and BJ said such details are reasons to design a careful policy, not reasons to refuse any policy. Critics may reasonably worry about recruiting, roster displacement, classification and administrative costs. Supporters would have to show that safeguards can address those risks while keeping the central purpose — access for students — intact.
From an idea to a rule change
Vernon said he submitted a proposal in 2025, revised it after feedback and presented the subject with Condron at an athletic directors’ conference. He said Carteret County representatives later submitted a proposal as well. The NCHSAA minutes confirm that a co-op policy reached committee review, though they do not identify all sponsors in the public summary.
For the idea to return with greater force, BJ and Cameron said more athletic directors, conferences and school systems would need to study it and communicate support. Parents and community members can begin with local athletic directors, then contact superintendents, district athletic administrators and school board members.
The task is not simply to demand that a nearby school take students. As Condron put it, “It takes two to tango.” Local leaders would need to identify a viable partner and demonstrate that the arrangement protects students at both schools.
Supporters also need better statewide data. A useful review would count not only how many schools fail to sponsor each sport but how many interested students are turned away, how far they live from the nearest program and why the sport is unavailable.
Facility shortages, coaching vacancies, costs and low participation may require different solutions. A co-op is most plausible when a small, identifiable group of students can join a nearby, sustainable program without displacing others.
The next formal step could be another member proposal, a request for an NCHSAA study or a limited pilot with reporting requirements. Any version should include transparent eligibility standards, enrollment adjustments, annual review, anti-recruiting safeguards and an exit plan when the home school can again sponsor a team.
A show focused on the people behind the schedules
The policy debate took most of the premiere, but “AD Huddle” also revealed the personal reasons Vernon and Condron remain in demanding jobs.
Condron said the work offers something new every day, from weather decisions to rapid public communication. Ultimately, he said, athletic directors want students to have the kind of positive athletic experience they had themselves.
Vernon described college signing celebrations as especially meaningful. He wanted to compete in college, eventually doing so at a Division III school, and said he tries to help students advocate for their own opportunities. Seeing one reach the next level brings “a smile to my face every time,” he said.
Before the podcast ended, Cameron announced their first guest would be Joe Sharrow, athletic director at Felton Grove High School. Sharrow received the NCHSAA Foundation’s 2026 Dave Harris Athletic Director Award of Excellence and has experience consolidating athletic programs in Vance County, rebuilding a large program at Jordan High School and launching athletics at a new Wake County school.