The Mountain State Athletic Conference welcomes four Cardinal Conference schools into the MSAC. This will make a total of 16 schools, the most in recent history of the conference.

Nine schools will be in the newly named Cardinal division and seven schools in the Mountain division.

The Cardinal will be mainly the 3A division and the Mountain division will be the mainly 4A division.

Herbert Hoover, Nitro, Ripley and Winfield will be part of the Cardinal division along with Capital, Riverside, Saint Albans, South Charleston and Spring Valley.

The Mountain division will be Cabell Midland, George Washington, Huntington, Hurricane, Parkersburg, Parkersburg South and Woodrow Wilson.

Conference play is slated to begin in the 2027-28 school year.

This allows those schools that have contracted games this upcoming year to be honored and then ready for a new MSAC slate of games.

There will be six assigned MSAC games in football.

This allows teams to still work out rivalry games and play other MSAC opponents. There will be no “crossover” assigned games in football.

In basketball and soccer, all teams will play the teams in their division once, plus three or four crossover games. The crossover games will not count in divisional won/lost standings. The popular Night of Champions at the South Charleston Community Center will now be only the championship games. The placement games will be on campus sites.

Baseball/softball will play everyone in their division twice to count toward the conference championship. The No. 1-4 teams will still be paired for the championship with the other teams playing placement games, either at the same championship park or at campuses.

Other sports such as golf, cross country, volleyball, cheer, wrestling, swim, tennis and track will have no assigned games and participate in one all-inclusive meet and have champions in the Cardinal and Mountain divisions.

The former Cardinal Conference members are invited to play in these tournaments next season (2026-27).

The MSAC is the largest “in-state” conference in West Virginia, with competition starting in full in the 2027-28 school year. Divisional play is a concept that all schools, including the 4A schools, had to adopt to make the format work.