One more could cost less for the Mountain Valley Conference.

On Friday, St. Dominic Regional High School was approved unanimously by the MVC member schools and will join the conference next season. It is a move that is expected to benefit the Saints and the league both competitively and financially.

“I’m very excited to go into the Mountain Valley Conference,” said Lee Hixon, the St. Dom’s athletic administrator. “20 years ago, Bob Boucher (the late St. Dom’s athletic director) tried to get us into that conference and didn’t get the votes to get in. In the back of our minds, it’s always been an idea to get into the Mountain Valley Conference since so many schools are in our backyard. In these economic times, it’s a good idea and a good fit for everybody.”

St. Dom’s becomes the first new MVC school since Monmouth Academy joined in 2001. Prior to that, the last additions were when the former Mid-Maine Conference teams joined in the early 1990’s.

“We’re excited, and it should make for even better play for our conference,” said Steve Ouellette, the athletic director at Monmouth Academy and the president of the MVC. “When you want to add a school, you want a school that’s comparable in size. The distance in travel is a big consideration. They’re very close to several of our schools, within a half hour of many of our schools. The biggest piece with them is you want to add a school that can make you better with quality competition, and they do that.”

The move benefits the Saints by giving them quality competition with less travel. For the league itself, it provides the conference 16 teams, allowing it to divide into two divisions in various sports.

“It gives us another quality school not just athletically but also academically,” said Jeff Ramich, the co-curricular coordinator at Lisbon. “We do a lot academically with our conference. They’re going to fit right in there. Athletically, they’re a perennial tournament team year in and year out. It’s going to make our league a little bit stronger. In this day and age, economically, it’s a great fit for us travel-wise.”

The idea for such a move began last summer when Hixon and Ouellette took a course together and began discussing the possibility. St. Dom’s principal Don Fournier has ties to Jay while Hixon is originally from Richmond. The more the idea was contemplated, the more it made sense, and saved cents.

“We’ve always had connections with these teams,” said Hixon. “When Steve mentioned it last summer, we said, ‘Lets look at the proximity geographically,’ and there are eight schools within 45 minutes of us.”

Hixon met with members of the MVC last month. Fournier and Hixon made a formal presentation Thursday. The member schools voted Friday morning. A consensus of 80 percent was needed, but the vote was unanimously in favor.

“I think this is going to be a great fit competitively,” said Hixon. “There are some sports in which we’ll do well, and there will be some sports where we’ll take our lumps for a few years until our program catches up with the Mountain Valley Conference.”

MVC schools had reservations about adding another class C school and were concerned with the fact that St. Dom’s is a private school, joining a conference of secular schools. Fournier and Hixon addressed that concern Thursday, citing figures that showed that predominantly most St. Dom’s students are ones that are continuing their Catholic education.

“Out of 272 kids at St. Dom’s, almost 190 of them are coming from Catholic, Christian or home-schooled backgrounds,” said Hixon. “They were kids that the schools in the (MVC) communities would never have seen anyway.”

Hixon said that of the 272 students at St. Dom’s, only 30 came from communities within the MVC. Out of those 30, 24 came from private schools.

“Mr. Fournier and Mr. Hixon did a really good presentation at our meeting,” said Ramich. “They gave us a letter, and it had all the facts and figures as far as what percentage of the kids actually go from a public middle school and then to St. Dom’s. The numbers were very minimal. They didn’t have to do a lot of swaying. It just really made not only economic sense, but it made good sense.”

It will be a significant change for the Saints, which will give up many of its traditional rivals. Since the MVC is a closed conference, St. Dom’s won’t play any regular season games outside its league schedule. One of the first comments Hixon heard when he announced the MVC’s approval Friday at a Western Maine Conference meeting, was from the NYA athletic director acknowledging the end of that traditional soccer rivalry.

“That’s a good rivalry, and we’ve had a lot of great games over the years,” said Hixon. “It doesn’t mean we can’t scrimmage. We’ll set them up as scrimmages and the kids can still get a taste of what a tough, great rivalry game this is and hopefully, we’ll see them in the playoffs.”

The Saints have had the upper hand traditionally when it comes to tournament soccer games against MVC teams, but the success rate is the opposite in basketball. In many sports, the Saints are at a comparable competitive level with most of the MVC programs.

“It’s going to make us stronger,” said Ramich. “In soccer, they’re always up there. Basketball, they’re always up there. Cheering, they’re always up there. That will give us another team in our MVC’s. It will make us stronger and make us practice harder in every sport.”

Both sides saw that it is a win-win situation for all involved and only bolsters the conference.

“From an athletic standpoint, it’s a good fit,” said Ouellette. “But from an academic standpoint, too, they have the rigorous standards, and they just add to the outstanding schools that we have.”