The Colonial League will have at least one more full member starting in the fall of 2024.

The Lehighton Area School Board members voted unanimously last week to join the Colonial League after playing in the Schuylkill League since 2014-15.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for us and obviously we have the experience of going from the Mountain Valley to the Schuylkill League, which will help us with the transition,” Lehighton Athletic Director Kyle Spotts said after the meeting. “It was hard to dismiss the fact that the Colonial League provided an opportunity for all of our student athletes. There were three programs (field hockey, tennis and competitive cheerleading) that the Schuylkill League unfortunately doesn’t have and it will be an exciting opportunity for the athletes in those sports to have a chance to play for a league title.”

Lehighton High School Principal Sue Howland said the district is in a unique spot geographically at the top end of the Lehigh Valley, but also not completely in the Schuylkill region. More Lehighton students and families, she said, relate to the Lehigh Valley through club teams and even their athletic trainers, many of whom are based in that area.

“I’m an old-school girl and I think our kids will be able to establish those kinds of rivals that we never really did in the Schuylkill League because it just wasn’t really part of our existence,” Howland said. “You look at rivalries with Palmerton, Northern Lehigh, Northwestern Lehigh, and even Notre Dame Green Pond where you get to go down and play in the old gym. I think it’s going to be very exciting for our students to be a part of all that.”

Like Spotts, Howland said a major factor in Lehighton’s consideration of the Colonial League’s invitation was taking that teams that were previously independent and allowing them to play a full league schedule.

Jim Thorpe, who like Lehighton made a bid to join the Colonial League in 1997, has also been invited to make the jump from the Schuylkill League. The Olympians are longtime members of the Schuylkill League, while Lehighton was a member of the Mountain Valley Conference until 2014, when the disbanded and the six Monroe County MVC schools joined the East Penn Conference.

Officials in Jim Thorpe said its school board will consider the invitation at its February board meeting.

With the addition of Lehighton, the Colonial League will have 14 teams in most sports. Jim Thorpe would bring the total to 15 and allow for three 5-team divisions in sports like basketball, baseball and softball. In some sports teams are playing unbalanced schedules with six teams in one division and seven in the other division.

The football scheduling cooperative between the Schuylkill and Colonial leagues will remain in place.

“I think we’ve always felt like an outsider in the Schuylkill League, and it’s been hard to get our teams motivated to play teams like Pottsville and Pine Grove,” said Lehighton girls basketball head coach Joe Berezwick said. “That’s never a problem when we play Palmerton or Northern Lehigh. Our players tend to know some of the girls on these teams from recreation leagues and AAU. There’s much more spirit when we play them.”

Lehighton will begin playing in the Colonial League in the 2024-25 school year.