Five teams most affected by Lancaster-Lebanon League realignment
2024 Berks football coverage
presented by UECU
There won’t be many defending champs across the five-section, 37-team Lancaster-Lebanon League this season. Realignment, approved in October, made sure of that.
The champs in Sections 2 (Manheim Central) and 4 (Cocalico), and two of the tri-champs in Section 3 (Ephrata and Twin Valley), will be playing in new sections for the upcoming two-year cycle.
In all 10 teams will find themselves playing a new league schedule this season; only Section 1 remains unchanged.
Four Berks teams will have new homes: Conrad Weiser, which moves to Section 3 (from 4); Daniel Boone and Twin Valley, which move to Section 4 (from 3); and Berks Catholic, which moves to Section 5 (from 4).
Section 3 is the most affected: Only Fleetwood, Solanco and tri-champ Garden Spot remain from 2023; four other teams have moved in.
Realignment will happen again in two years, though it’s hard to imagine this much movement.
In the mean time here’s a look at the five teams most affected by the changes, some for the better, some for the worse.
Exeter Eagles
No program benefited more from realignment than Exeter.
The Eagles’ biggest challenger in Section 2, state power Manheim Central, is now playing in Section 3. So is Warwick, which has won or shared a couple of section championships in recent years, including Section 1 in 2018.
(Chris Knight/LNP photo)
The Eagles were good enough to win the Section 2 title in their first season in the league, knocking off the Barons in a season-ending showdown for first place – in Manheim, no less. Not many teams do that.
Exeter graduated a lot of talent from last season’s 8-3 team, including all-league tight end Zach Zandier and triple threat Nate Pashley.
It returns a lot, too, starting with All-State playmaker Jayden Zandier, monster tackle Logan Wegman and quarterback Riley Martinez.
Ephrata, which comes into to Section 2 after going 12-2 and sharing the Section 3 title, graduated 10 all-league players, including quarterback Sam McCracken.
The Eagles’ biggest challenge this season could be in not being challenged very often. The non-league portion of their schedule is not as strong as it had been and only Conestoga Valley, which returns dynamic running back Jayden Johnson – the Section 2 Offensive Back of the Year – from a 9-3 team appears to be a threat within the league.
Berks Catholic Saints
At their apex the Saints were able to battle with the best teams in Section 1 of the Berks League and with much larger schools in their non-league schedule.
No longer. They have finished below .500 in each of the past two seasons, unthinkable not so long ago when Division I talent such as Brandon George and Isaac and Cooper Lutz flowed from the backfield.
Berks Catholic played up the past two seasons in Section 4 but moves to Section 5 where it will still be among the smaller schools by enrollment (only Pequea Valley, Lancaster Catholic, and Columbia are smaller).
The move down should be a boon for the Saints, and for Section 5 in general. What has proven to be a very competitive section will be better and deeper.
Schuylkill Valley returns a talented and veteran lineup and is clearly the team to beat but the Saints – even with a young lineup, little experience at the skill positions and a new head coach in Dave Stahler – figure to be competitive with the other top teams in the section.
If things break well, the Saints’ new schedule – they’ll face eight different opponents this season – could help them return to the district playoffs for the first time in three years.
Twin Valley Raiders
Realignment did the Raiders no favors.
Had things remained the same they would’ve run away with Section 3 title. Now that they’re in Section 4 they’ll see much more competition, namely from Wyomissing and Lampeter-Strasburg.
That doesn’t mean Twin Valley can’t win another section title (it finished in a three-way tie for first last year, going 10-2).
The Raiders are absolutely loaded and well could be the best team in Berks – maybe even the entire 37-team Lancaster-Lebanon League.
Evan Myers returns for his fourth year at quarterback and will line up in the backfield with a pair of 1,000-yard backs, Drew Engle and Evan Johnson. No one else across the league has that kind of experience or talent in the backfield.
The Raiders graduated Section 3’s Defensive Lineman of the Year in Ean Winchester and all-league linemen Paul McClue and Noah Roehm. They’re still big and strong up front, with the return of Naval Academy recruit Aris Drake, second-team all-league guard Greyson Miller and transfer Carter Fauble, a 275-pounder who will step right in up front.
Northern Lebanon Vikings
The Vikings caught a break the past two seasons when they swapped spots with Berks Catholic and got to play in Section 5. Even as the largest school (by enrollment) they won only four league games.
Now they’re really going to be up against it, going against Class 4A powers Twin Valley and Wyomissing in Section 4, as well as Lampeter-Strasburg, one of the most consistent programs in the league (32 regular season wins over the last four seasons).
Those programs regularly put twice as many players in uniform as does Northern Lebanon; competing with them will be difficult.
Vikings coach Jason Rice vented his frustration about the move on Twitter last fall; he felt his long-struggling program was showing progress but fears that it will be thwarted by playing in Section 4.
The Vikings improved from two wins in a three-year span games from 2018-2020 to 10 wins over the last three seasons.
Northern Lebanon had five players named to the Section 5 all-league team last year, including Linebacker of the Year Luke Shaffer; four have graduated.
Over the last four seasons no current Section 4 team has won fewer games than Northern Lebanon. Over the last eight seasons the Vikings have won just 25 times. Nine of those came in 2017.
The last time they made the District 3 Tournament they opened at Wyomissing – and lost 65-3. They’ll make another trip to what’s now called Bob Wolfrum Field in September. It won’t be an easy trip.
Daniel Boone Blazers
The Blazers could’ve done without realignment; they might’ve been more competitive in the former Section 3 than the current Section 4.
Granted, they weren’t going to run down Twin Valley or Garden Spot anytime soon but the competition is even fiercer now in Section 4, what with the Raiders, Wyomissing and Lampeter-Strasburg on the league schedule.
No matter where they ended up the Blazers aren’t ready to compete for a title right now. They’ve won just three times the past two seasons and bring back even less game-night experience than they had last year, when they fiished 1-9, or the year before.
That said, there are some wins out there if Boone can put things together: Octorara, Donegal and Northern Lebanon are all struggling programs. The Braves went winless in Section 4 play the past two seasons. The Indians’ only league win last year came against Octorara; they were shut out by Wyomissing, Cocalico and Elco. Northern Lebanon hasn’t beaten a current Section 4 team since 2017.
By enrollment Boone falls into Section 3 but it swapped places for the next two seasons with Manheim Central, which didn’t want to play in Section 4 and be forced to play some smaller schools (and thus lose potential playoff power rating points).
That’s too bad: Seeing the Barons play Wyomissing and Twin Valley would’ve been well worth the price of admission.
Lancaster-Lebanon League 2024-25
(Teams listed by enrollment numbers.)
| Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5 |
| Reading High | Lebanon | Warwick | Daniel Boone | Hamburg |
| McCaskey | Gov. Mifflin | Conrad Weiser | Twin Valley | Kutztown |
| Hempfield | Exeter | Solanco | Lampeter-Strasburg | Schuylkill Valley |
| Wilson | Ephrata | Cocalico | Donegal | Annville-Cleona |
| Manheim Township | Elizabethtown | Fleetwood | Elco | Berks Catholic |
| Penn Manor | Muhlenberg | Garden Spot | Octorara | Pequea Valley |
| Cedar Crest | Conestoga Valley | Manheim Central | Northern Lebanon | Lancaster Catholic |
| Wyomissing | Columbia |