A few hours after the Georgia High School Association announced the new region alignments for the 2010-2014 school years, coaches were still not sure what to make of the changes.

"I don't know how it will be," Woodstock football coach Mike O'Brien said. "We picked up some real good schools, but I don't know how it's going to shake out. It's certainly interesting. I haven't really studied it much. I was surprised."

Woodstock will remain in Region 5AAAAA, where it has been for the past four years. However, the region got quite a shake-up with McEachern, East Paulding, Harrison, North Cobb, South Cobb and Kennesaw Mountain departing.

The region lineup will include Lassiter, Walton and Wheeler from Region 6AAAAA, while Cherokee, Etowah and Marietta will join Woodstock as holdovers from the existing Region 5AAAAA.

"I had no idea it was going to be that way," O'Brien said.

With just seven teams in Region 5AAAAA, coaches will have more flexibility in adding non-region games, particularly in football, where teams typically play few non-region opponents.

"Now, we'll have to go out and find four games," O'Brien said. "There's a lot of schools that you would want to play, but they can't play you because they have so many schools in their region."

Many coaches also take into consideration tiebreakers when making their schedules, and shy away from lower classified schools.

In Class AAAA, Sequoyah and Creekview were assigned to the 11-team Region 7. Though the GHSA divided the schools into subregions, Creekview football coach Al Morrell anticipates a vote at the upcoming region meeting to decide if the format will remain that way.

Either way, Morrell is looking forward to more meaning being given to his team's budding rivalry with county rival Sequoyah.

"We have played (Sequoyah) the last two years and, definitely, being in the same region will probably just increase that even more, so it should be real exciting," he said.

With a maximum of 10 games in a regular football season, Region 7AAAA could play a straight region schedule beginning in 2010 with no non-region games. Every team would have a chance to play every other team, and the region champion could be decided without a one-game playoff, as in the current model.

But a strict region schedule would prevent Creekview and Sequoyah from developing football rivalries with in-county programs such as Woodstock, Etowah and Cherokee, because the game simply would not fit into the schedule.

"We wouldn't get to schedule teams like Sequoyah and Creekview that are big-gate games for us," O'Brien said. "I'd hate to lose games like that."

Sequoyah, which is currently in Region 7AAAA, will lose two of its current top region rivals in Sprayberry and Hillgrove. This past season, the Chiefs' football program lost to both rivals and missed out on a playoff berth because of it.

Also exiting the region were Allatoona, Dalton and Murray County - which all dropped to Class AAA - and the Region 5AAAA-bound Hiram, South Paulding, North Paulding and Osborne. Chattahoochee, which dropped from Class AAAAA, was added along with a collection of current Class AAA programs.

Set to play in Region 7AAAA - which will stretch, west to east, from Cartersville to Cumming - are Sequoyah, Creekview, Cass, Northwest Whitfield, Rome, Woodland-Bartow, Chattahoochee, Forsyth Central, Johns Creek, Lambert and South Forsyth.

For Creekview, it will be a welcome change from their current spot in Region 7AAA, where it has been forced to make region trips as far north as Dahlonega and Cleveland and as far east as Flowery Branch and Gainesville.

"We're looking forward to it," Morrell said of the challenge of Region 7AAAA. "I think, week in and week out, we will be a little closer, but there are still a few games far out. It's not going to be any worse that what we've had the last few years."

Another potential subplot could arise in the pairing of Sequoyah and Lambert. The Chiefs' longtime football coach, Sid Maxwell, left to launch the program at the Suwanee school before the 2009 season and, based on how the schedules are made, could make a return trip to the Skip Pope Stadium sidelines he patrolled for 19 years.

Cherokee County's newest school, River Ridge, will log plenty of travel miles in Region 7AA as the school will compete at a varsity level in its second year of operation.

The 15-team region will likely be split into subregions, with the Knights falling in to a field with Adairsville, Armuchee, Coosa, Model, Pepperell and Rockmart. The other subregion would feature Calhoun, Chattooga, Coahulla Creek, Dade County, Gordon Central, Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe, North Murray and Sonoraville.

River Ridge would be, by far, the southernmost school in a Region 7AA comprised primarily of schools in Rome and northward. The closest region trips for the Knights would be Rockmart and Sonoraville, which each are about 45 miles away, while the furthest would be more than 100 miles to Dade County in the northwestern corner of state.