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<p>UNION TWP. &#8212; The Northwest Area School Board voted unanimously this week to approve a request by athletic director Matthew Mills to possibly have Northwest compete in District 4&#8217;s Mid Penn Conference in football and basketball beginning with the 2020-21 school year.</p><p>Mills said the proposed change would result in Northwest competing against such schools as Muncy, Hughesville, Benton and Montgomery. It may also require a shift from PIAA District 2 to District 4.</p><p>In his proposal to the school board, Mills outlined that sports impacted by the prospective shift would be junior high, junior varsity and varsity football, and junior varsity and varsity basketball.</p><p>The Mid Penn Conference currently doesn&#8217;t have a football league. However, there are talks of forming one using smaller football programs from the Heartland Conference and Northern Tier League. There is also a Mid Penn Conference in District 3 consisting of bigger schools in the Harrisburg area that isn&#8217;t affiliated with D4&#8217;s Mid Penn Conference.</p><p>Mills said the proposal comes after the Wilkes-Barre Area School District decided to merge the sports programs of Coughlin, Meyers and GAR for the next school year. That takes away two regular opponents for the Rangers &#8212; GAR and Meyers &#8212; and made it more difficult to schedule teams in Northwest&#8217;s classifications in those sports &#8212; Class A in football and Class 2A in basketball. Northwest replaced GAR and Meyers with Lackawanna Conference schools Riverside and Susquehanna on the 2019 football schedule.</p><p>Mills noted that in order to fill the boys basketball slate, he had to schedule games with larger schools such as Class 6A Scranton. Northwest defeated Scranton 64-57 on Dec. 18.</p><p>Mills indicated that in aligning with the Mid Penn Conference, Northwest will have greater latitude in filling its schedules and will be competing with schools with similar enrollments. The Northern Tier League consists of 12 schools, with nine of them in either Class A or Class 2A.</p><p>Sports schedules are done on a two-year basis, so Northwest is locked into the Wyoming Valley Conference for the 2019-20 school year. Berwick recently addressed the possibility of moving to the Heartland Conference, but elected to stay in the Wyoming Valley Conference.</p><p>The board also retained football coach Lon Hazlet for a fifth season.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By John Erzar</p><p>and Tom Huntington</p><p>sports@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Times Leader Sports at 570-829-7143 or on Twitter @TLSports</p></shirttailMeta></div>

H.S. Sports: Northwest football, basketball might leave Wyoming Valley Conference