Hope everyone has had a chance to read our story today on a proposed unprecedented 14-team, dual-division conference that would merge the Tri-Nine and PAC-6 conferences in 2013.

There was a lot going on behind-the-scenes leading up to this proposal in recent weeks. Many of it did not or could not make the story, so I'll post it below.

One man's conspiracy theory

Green Hope and Panther Creek made requests to the N.C. High School Athletic Associaton on Tuesday to place the schools in a league with other current Tri-Nine 4A schools.

The N.C. High School Athletic Association's staff model of realignment for the 2013-17 seasons has been posted.

These conferences are not finalized.  This is just the most recent draft.

Like NCHSAA comissioner Davis Whitfield said this week: "realignment is a nine-inning game, and we're in the second inning."

Recently, the NCHSAA released a computer model that was programmed to group conferences into 6-8 teams with no split conferences. It served as a starting point to the staff's model, which does include split conferences.

We still have two more drafts of realignment to go -- a second draft will be made on Feb. 15 and the final one will be released in May. However, this draft is more similar to the final product than the previous draft done by the computer model.

Here are the proposed conference changes to our area teams. In parentheses, we use the conference name as we know these leagues now.

The N.C. High School Athletic Association released its SAS Institute's initial model for the 2013-17 realignment. It has been understood that the first SAS computer model wouldn't be perfect -- the system is programmed to group conferences into 6-8 teams with no split conferences.

But still, some of the proposed new conferences -- which are by no means final -- are surprising. Here is a breakdown and overview of the teams in our area.

The N.C. High School Athletic Association has released its first draft of this spring's boys and girls lacrosse conferences. Since less than a fourth of NCHSAA schools have either program, new conferences are made bringing together those that do. Finalized conferences will be released later.

Among the proposed changes:

After juggling the ideas of going to five or three classifications, the N.C. High School Athletic Association will stick with four for the next realignment. The decision comes after an study by SAS that broke down each possible realignment's ramifications.

The timeline for the next realignment was approved by the board. In November, the process of drafting NCHSAA conferences for the 2013-17 seasons will begin.