Athens Drive has played in three different conferences during the course of the last three N.C. High School Athletic Association realignment periods.

If the current realignment proposal is adopted, the Jaguars will be on the move again.

The committee’s initial proposal, which was released Nov. 29, calls for Athens Drive to be moved to what is now the Cap-7. Its departure from the Tri-Eight will make room for Holly Springs, which is slated to leave the Greater Neuse.

The addition of Holly Springs is a welcome one, but Athens Drive shouldn’t be moved to make way.

When Athens joined the Tri-Eight in 2005, it seemed like the right fit. The last two and a half years have proven that to be true. Athens made an already deep conference even more so.

It would be a shame if the NCHSAA’s realignment committee does not heed the appeals of Athens Drive, the conference’s other seven schools and Wake County Schools’ and keep Athens right where it is.

William Crockett, Athens’ principal, pitched his case to the realignment committee Thursday in Greenville, where all schools in the East had the opportunity to share their thoughts on the current proposal.

“We have a strong identification now with the Tri-Eight and those schools, and those are the schools that we have our natural rivalries with and we’ve developed a real healthy relationship with all those schools,” Crockett said Friday. “We feel like our affiliation and identity we’ve had with the Tri-Eight has really helped our athletic program.”

The other seven schools in the conference have thrown their support behind Athens’ cause. The athletic directors from each school unanimously voted in favor of keeping Athens, while also adding Holly Springs.

“They’re a good fit for this area,” said Kurt Glendenning, Cary’s athletic director, of Athens Drive. “We’ve built up good rivalries. … It’s just camaraderie. They’re very comfortable and we hope that they will not go anywhere.”

Moving Athens is just a temporary fix. When Heritage High opens in Wake Forest, sometime in the next couple years, it will most likely go into what is now the Cap-7. If Athens does get switched, then it will be a part of a nine-team conference, just as it would if it remains where it is and Holly Springs still moves.

Travel distance isn’t much of a reason for the move either. Athens’ current average distance from the other Tri-Eight schools is 15.7 miles (that number is the same with Holly Springs factored in). If Athens were to move to the Cap-7, it would be located an average of 13.7 miles (excluding Heritage) away from the rest of the league’s schools.

Athens’ longest road trip in the Tri-Eight is to Sanford, where Lee County’s campus is located roughly 40 miles to the south. Its shortest trip is to Cary High, 4.8 miles away.

If Athens moves, its longest trip would be 25 miles to Wake Forest-Rolesville High. Its shortest trip would be to Broughton (5.8 miles).

Crockett also raised a concern about how a move might affect gate receipts, the lifeblood of any Wake County school’s athletic budget. It’s not unreasonable to fear that many from north Raleigh won’t bother to battle the Beltline or Capital Boulevard to get to Athens Drive to watch a game.

Athens has been shifted about several times since it opened in 1978. Until 1989, it was in a league comprising several current Cap-7 schools. In the 1989 realignment, Athens, Cary, Smithfield-Selma and Erwin Triton left the Cap-9, added East Wake and Apex and formed the Tri-Six.

Four years later, Athens was sent back to the Cap-7, where it stayed until 2001, when it joined the Triangle Alliance with Garner, East Wake, Enloe, Southeast Raleigh and South Johnston.

Then came the move in 2005 to the Tri-Eight.

The realignment committee will reconvene on Feb. 7 and take into consideration all the proposals offered by various schools. It will then issue a second proposal. Schools will have until April 1 to appeal. In May, realignment will be finalized, and the new conferences will begin play in the fall of 2009.

The committee’s task is not easy, as it has several other more complicated moves to figure out. But Athens’ situation is simple.

Just leave it be.

“We were really reassured by the fact the other schools in the conference voted to keep us,” Crockett said. “That tells us the conference is healthy as a whole, and there is a real healthy competitiveness within the conference. It’s a good situation to be in, and we want to stay where we are.”