By Tom Robinson, NEPASportsNation.com
The Lackawanna Interscholastic Athletic Association will stick with its two-division girls volleyball alignment for the next two-year cycle, but two teams will be trading places.
Blue Ridge will move up to Division 1 for the 2022 and 2023 seasons after winning the Division 2 title and sweeping all 10 of its matches against divisional opponents in three sets.
Lackawanna Trail will drop to Division 2 after finishing last in Division 1. The Lady Lions were 0-2 in Division 1, getting swept in three sets in seven of those losses.
LIAA athletic directors are in the process of developing schedules or the next two-year sports cycle, the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. The first step in that process is agreeing on divisional alignments, which the LIAA did in many sports, including girls volleyball, earlier this month.
Blue Ridge, which has won the last eight District 2 Class A titles, lost only to the top two teams in Division 1, champion Western Wayne and Dunmore.
The Lackawanna League uses a format in which teams play home-and-home against all their divisional opponents and once against teams from the opposite division.
Division 1 teams will play a 14-match schedule while those in Division 2 will play 15 matches.
Western Wayne, Dunmore and Blue Ridge will be joined in Division 1 by Abington Heights and North Pocono.
Division 2 will feature Lackawanna Trail, Mountain View, Susquehanna, Montrose, Forest City and Elk Lake.
All Lackawanna League teams had been grouped together from 2012 to 2020. A move back to the two-division format used up to 2011 was delayed one season from 2020 to 2021 because of a shortened 2020 schedule for COVID.
MORE LIAA REALIGNMENT
Baseball changing to three divisions: https://nepasportsnation.com/changes-ahead-in-liaa-baseball/.
