While the rest of the state was analyzing plans for full-scale realignment to high school football, the Class C wing of the Campbell Conference was quietly making some changes of its own, using similar enrollment-based methods.

In hopes of promoting competitive balance, the conference realigned its two divisions and devised schedules based on school size. The smaller schools, Boothbay, Freeport, Old Orchard Beach, Sacopee Valley, Telstar, Traip and Winthrop, make up the new South division, and “bigger” schools Dirigo, Lisbon, Maranacook, Oak Hill, Poland, Winslow and Yarmouth make up the new North.

Each team plays seven games within its own division, plus two crossover games.

Despite the musical chairs, coaches throughout the conference agree it doesn’t change the team to beat. Two-time defending state champion Yarmouth lost head coach Jim Hartman and a dozen seniors, but the Clippers still have junior quarterback Brady Neujahr. New coach Chris Pingitore inherits a 24-game winning streak and an excellent offensive line blocking for Neujahr and senior running back Caleb Uhl.

Region runner-up Traip may have the only line that can trump Yarmouth’s. No one is happier to see four of five starters back up front than running back Cory Aldecoa, who rushed for over 1,000 yards last year behind the large wall. The only thing that could hold the Rangers back besides Yarmouth is depth, or a lack thereof. They will have to stay healthy.

Aldecoa may be the league’s best running back with Luke Emery no longer toting the rock for Maranacook. The Black Bears still have plenty of firepower to contend, though. Quarterback Caleb Castonguay and running back Jesse Evans return behind a veteran offensive line. Winslow has running backs Joe Hopkins and Dylan Hapworth returning to terrorize opposing defenses with their speed.

Accustomed to making due with less bodies than most teams, Lisbon will have to endure with a little bit less than usual to start the season. Up to five starters could be academically ineligible for the first two games. But anyone suiting up for the Greyhounds already knows he is in for a full day’s work.

“We don’t have a lot of kids, so a lot of kids are going to have to play both ways,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said.

Having a small team physically is usually a given for the Greyhounds, too, but this team has more size at the line of scrimmage than most the venerable coach has seen.

“I have more 200-pounders than I’ve ever had,” he said. “We don’t have the really big kids, but we’ve got three or four kids that will be in the low-200s, so we won’t be really undersized, as much as we have been in the past.”

Casey Garrison, Ryan Brewer and Joe Philbrick, moving from fullback, lead a formidable set of blockers for running backs Mason Hayley, Quincy Thompson, Jordan Torres and Kyle Sheehan. Senior Ryan Riordan, who has seen spot starting QB duties the last two years, will return.

The Greyhounds have more experience coming back on the other side of the ball. Sheehan sets the tone for Lisbon’s trademark physical defense at middle linebacker.

“I’m hoping the defense is going to be the strength of our team,” he said. “It’s certainly going to have to keep us in the first two games, but even that’s going to demand a little juggling.”

Mynahan already had to juggle his coaching staff after losing longtime assistant coach Stacen Doucette to Oak Hill. Doucette is bringing the same offensive philosophy 10 miles north, using multiple formations to take advantage of his own talent and the opposition’s weaknesses.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of I (formation), a lot of shifting and motion,” Doucette said. “It’s a new system, new terminology for the kids. The coaches and the kids worked really hard during the summer and the kids learned a lot of that system over the summer, so it’s been a pretty smooth transition into the preseason.”

Doucette said incumbent junior Parker Asselin and senior Sam Morin, returning after a year in soccer, are “1A and 1B” in the quarterback pecking order.

“I expect a lot of out of the quarterback position,” he said. “I expect results and I expect leadership.”

Alex Mace and Joel Wells, understudies to all-conference running back Cody Depuy last year, return to the backfield, along with Brandon Potvin and Kyle Flaherty. The Raiders also have Jon Averill, Cody Collingwood and Luke Washburn for the passing game.

Oak Hill’s strength will be its offensive line, which is deep and experienced.

The Raiders haven’t encountered as many philosophical changes on defense, where they will continue to play a five-man front. The man in the middle of that front, Donnie Vannah, is always a threat to get into the backfield despite having to fight through blockers outweighing him by 100 pounds.

“The goal is to be physical this year, on both sides of the ball,” Doucette said.

Winthrop missed the playoffs for the first time since 2006 last year, but the team showed flashes of brilliance, particularly at the skill positions.

“Those guys played well last year. They’re competitive, and hopefully, that experience is going to pay off for them,” Winthrop coach Joel Stoneton said.

Junior quarterback Jared Hanson is showing the comfort level of a signal-caller with a year of varsity experience under his belt. Look for fellow juniors Zach Glazier and Drew Stratton to take advantage of their big-play ability with their year of seasoning. Senior Danny Moody joins Glazier to form one of the best two-back attacks in the conference.

Stoneton hopes more experience and a more balanced division helps the Ramblers return to the post-season.

“It’s good to be playing against teams with (enrollments) around 300 and 350 as opposed to 400 and 450 like last year,” Stoneton said. “I think things are going to be a little more even than last year and I’m hoping we’re going to be in the mix.”

While Winthrop’s backfield is battle tested, Dirigo can’t say the same. The Cougars offense ran through Bryan Blackman last year. This year, coach Dave Crutchfield plans to spread the ball out more amongst a senior-dominated group.

“We have some speed with Nick Young, then we’ve got some size with Spencer Trenoweth,” Crutchfield said. “Thomas Barnett going from guard to fullback is going to help us out.”

Even with Barnett’s move, much of the line that blocked for Blackman is back, and Crutchfield is counting on it to help the transition at quarterback to Brett Whittemore, who replaces two-year starter Ben Holmes.

“Brett can run the team. He definitely knows the offense and just needs some time to get it under his belt and get comfortable with it,” he said.

Poland’s triple option requires a QB with a certain comfort level, and coach Ted Tibbetts has that in senior Tony Whalen. It helps that Whalen can feel pretty comfortable with his surroundings, as nine of 11 starters return on offense for the Knights.

Start with senior fullback Tyler Sturtevant, who Tibbetts calls “the heart and soul of our team.” Split end Brandon Drottar and linemen Isaac Stone, Sam Scales and Nelson Goyette lead a senior class determined to get the Knights their first playoff berth. It could happen if they can overcome an old nemesis, unforced mistakes.

“The biggest thing is to eliminate the turnovers,” Tibbetts said. “We have things that I call the ‘RSU’s,’ the royal screw-ups. If we can just avoid the’RSU’s,’ we don’t have to be great. We just have to be consistently solid.”

Tibbetts is “cautiously optimistic” that the Knights are making strides towards consistency. They just need to maintain it throughout the season.

“We have to be focused,” he said. “We’ve got the speed. We’ve got the talent, We’ve got the intelligence. We just need to consistently focus.”

Having joined the varsity ranks a little over a decade ago, perhaps Poland can relate to what Telstar is going through in its second year of varsity football. The Rebels’ numbers declined after a winless rookie campaign. But coach Tim O’Connor is more concerned with upping the tempo than the numbers at this point.

“One of the biggest things for us from last year to this year is we need to step up our speed,” O’Connor said. “I think the speed of our team last year… was more like a JV team. I think the kids realized how fast the game goes and we’ve got to step up our speed and our execution.”

Executing better on defense would be most welcome, where the Rebels showed their inexperience in subtleties “like linebackers filling. We didn’t fill very well, not very quick,” O’Connor said. “We were going parallel to the line of scrimmage instead of filling at the line of scrimmage or on the other side of the ball. The kids get that now.”

Quarterback Jared Vermette, who saw considerable playing time backing up Dom Haines last season, gets the job full-time with Haines transferring to Mountain Valley. Nick Mills, a 220-pound senior power rusher, led the Rebels in yardage last season and will do a lot of running behind returning fullback Will Lyman and all-conference guard Kurt Morgan and sophomore Ryan Vail.

Western Class C Predicted Order of Finish

1. Yarmouth

2. Traip

3. Maranacook

4. Winslow

5. Lisbon

6. Oak Hill

7. Winthrop

8. Dirigo

9. Poland

10. Freeport

11. Old Orchard Beach

12. Boothbay

13. Telstar

14. Sacopee Valley

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