More than a year after the competitive balance debate began, Gray Collegiate is still dealing with the fallout.

Gray, which transitioned to a new region in a new classification this year, learned two of its new rivals and fellow Lexington County schools, Brookland-Cayce and Airport, won’t play any sub-varsity contests against the school.

“It’s disappointing,” Gray Collegiate athletic director Kevin Heise said. “Those are local games, a lot of familiarity between a lot of the student-athletes with each other, coaching staffs, families, etcetera. So obviously we’re disappointed not to get to play those sub varsity contests. But we’re going to control the things we can control.”

The Chronicle reached out to representatives from Airport and Brookland-Cayce for comment but was referred to a statement from the Lexington Two school district.

“This is the first year of transition to a new region makeup, and our varsity teams are excited about competing against all of our region opponents,” the statement read. “However, schools have more latitude in scheduling sub-varsity, across all sports, so we’ve decided to make some adjustments at that level for this school year.”

Based on the current rules, JV teams are not required to play their region opponents, unlike their varsity counterparts.

In the spring of 2023, Gray faced forfeits from their 2A opponents. Those forfeits carried over into the next school year, where the team played no region contest in any sport. The War Eagles would win their region by forfeit but were forced to find replacement games, often out of state, if they wanted to compete before the playoffs.

Gray, Airport and Brookland-Cayce were placed in a region this year after a multiplier rule was implemented by the South Carolina High School League as a solution to the competitive balance debate. After increasing scrutiny on how charter schools build their rosters, it was decided each student attending a school outside of their zone would count as three on the total enrollment number. This moved Gray up from 2A to 4A, Brookland-Cayce from 3A to 4A and Airport stayed at 4A.

The move to cancel came as a surprise to Heise who was under the impression both schools would be willing to play Gray in sub-varsity contest.

“We had a meeting last February for the new Region, and the agreement at the table was that everybody was going to play,” Heise said. “In fact, when I brought up, should we have contracts within the region, other athletic directors looked at me like I had six eyes, basically saying, ‘We’re in 4A, we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to worry about contracts within the region.’”

Despite the cancellations, Heise said he doesn’t believe Gray’s teams will be at a disadvantage. Almost all of the contests have been replaced already, and Heise said any competition is good competition.

“That’s the one thing that has to be clear, we can’t control other people,” Heise said. “But we can have a plan for what we want to do, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

Heise believes the problem will be solved in time. Time will tell if the multiplier works, time will tell if the regions make sense and time will tell if other schools come around to the idea of playing Gray at every level in every sport.

“As time goes on and charter schools become more prevalent, … I think you’re going to see more and more charter schools in different pockets of the state where it becomes more of the norm,” Heise said. “I do think in time, maybe two or three years, maybe five or six years, I don’t know how long it’s going to take. But I think you’ll see some of this kind of go away as it becomes more prevalent and more normal for charter schools and schools like this to exist.”