The COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant factor in the effort of South Fork Conference schools attempts to complete their volleyball schedules. Maiden, then Newton-Conover, Bandys & East Lincoln all had to change schedules because of the virus. In order to get the remaining matches completed in time for the volleyball playoffs, the conference has announced a completely new schedule for the rest of the season. It is one double-header and one tri-match but will allow teams to finish before the January 9th playoff deadline.
The NCHSAA will seed teams based on winning percentage as reported to MaxPreps, regardless of the number of games played. Some teams will not get in 14 matches, but the Conference Championship will be determined based on an 11-game schedule, which means that each of the Top 5 teams, may drop 1 game each that they played against the bottom 3 teams, in order to have 11 games. Conference officials say they understand that several conferences are facing the same issue, but adjustments had to be made because of the virus. The South Fork Conference will have two automatic playoff berths.
The new schedule has the following matches scheduled for this week:
Monday Dec. 21st
Maiden @ North Lincoln
Lincolnton @ West Lincoln
Newton-Conover @ Lake Norman Charter
Tuesday Dec. 22nd
West Lincoln @ Bandys
Lake Norman Charter @ Lincolnton
North Lincoln @ Newton-Conover
The schedule will then resume with matches on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week:
Tuesday Dec. 29th
Lake Norman Charter @ Bandys
a double-header at Bandys--
Lincolnton vs North Lincoln 11AM
Bandys vs North Lincoln 1 PM
a 'tri-match' at Maiden
East Lincoln vs Newton-Conover 1 PM
followed by East Lincoln vs Maiden
and then Maiden vs Newton-Conover
Wednesday Dec. 30th
Maiden @ West Lincoln
Bandys @ East Lincoln
Lincolnton @ Newton-Conover
North Lincoln @ Lake Norman Charter
The final week of the regular season will be Jan. 4-8:
Monday Jan. 4th
East Lincoln @ North Lincoln
Bandys @ Lake Norman Charter
Wednesday Jan. 6th
North Lincoln @ Maiden
Lake Norman Charter @ East Lincoln
Thursday Jan. 7th
North Lincoln @ Lincolnton
Friday Jan. 8th
Maiden @ East Lincoln
BASKETBALL
In addition, the South Fork Conference has decided to play a different format in basketball this year. The junior varsity girls will play, followed by the varsity girls. Then, the junior varsity boys will play followed by the boys varsity. This will allow letting teams that practice together ride to and from games together, and hopefully help to avoid multiple Covid-19 reschedules. Also, any games scheduled against Lake Norman Charter, will begin at 4:30 with varsity girls, since they are not fielding a JV girls team.
Even though schedule changes have been necessary, the agreement with the South Fork Conference Network remains in place and while restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic mean that fans can't attend the matches, they are being live-streamed and you can purchase access for $10 at https://www.sfcnetwork.tv/. The price is per device, which means that several people can watch. Click on the link here for more information.
