Pocket Athletic Conference Adopts Two-Division Format for Team Sports in 2027

The Pocket Athletic Conference, the largest high school athletic conference in Indiana by geographic size, announced it will divide its 13 member schools into two divisions for team sports beginning with the 2027–28 school year, citing mounting travel and scheduling burdens across its eight-county footprint in Southwestern Indiana.

Under the new alignment, the East Division will include Boonville, Forest Park, Heritage Hills, Southridge, South Spencer and Tell City. The West Division will comprise Gibson Southern, Mount Vernon, North Posey, Pike Central, Princeton, Tecumseh and Washington. Football will not be affected by the restructuring; it will retain the existing Big School/Small School format.

The conference pointed directly to its geographic scale as the driving force behind the change. "The PAC has long prided itself on fostering strong competition while creating meaningful opportunities and lasting memories for students across the region," a PAC press release stated. "The move to a divisional structure is intended to help alleivate [sic] travel demands while maintaining strong conference competition."

Scheduling formats, championship structures and other operational details are still being worked out. PAC officials said those specifics will be finalized over the coming months. The conference competes in every sport sanctioned by the Indiana High School Athletic Association.

The PAC has been a fixture of Southwestern Indiana athletics since its founding in 1938. Its current 13-member roster is composed primarily of schools in classes 1A through 3A under the IHSAA's four-class system. The conference's size grew considerably in 2020–21, when Boonville, Mount Vernon, Princeton and Washington joined following the collapse of the former Big Eight Conference.

With the divisional format still more than a year away from taking effect, the structure of how East and West schools will compete against one another, and how conference championships will be determined, remains an open question heading into what figures to be a busy few months of planning for PAC administrators.