The long awaited vote for the consolidation of the three Cherokee County High Schools was conducted on May 28th, where the Cherokee County School Board voted 4-2 in favor of consolidation. Thanks to a $15 million dollar grant that the county received back in 2018, Murphy, Andrews and Hiwasee Dam High Schools will all be joined as one on a campus in Peachtree, across from the Tri-County Community College. 

 

There will be 821 total students at the new high school which puts them as of now in the 2A bracket for athletics with the likes of Pisgah, Franklin, and Smoky Mountain. As it is right now, the school should be able to stay in the Smoky Mountain Conference even though they are moving to 2A, as the Western Highlands and Mountain Valley conferences have teams that are in the 1A and 2A classification. 

 

Conference realignment happens every four years including this coming year so this could all change very quickly, and since the school is not projected to be open until 2025 at the earliest we could see 2 different conference realignments before the school opens its doors. 

 

These three schools on their own have been fairly successful against 2A competition when they have met in the past. 

 

Last year Murphy’s football team defeated both Pisgah and Franklin in back to back weeks, and in 2018 defeated both Hendersonville and Gilmer county. Andrews’ basketball team also defeated Brevard in a Christmas tournament just this past year. 

 

Murphy head football coach David Gentry is the first of the 3 consolidated

schools to publicly come out and say that he will not be a part of the County school. Gentry told the Asheville Citizen Times that it would be an option if he was younger, but that he is on the backend of his career and does not want to coach until he dies. Gentry has already confirmed that he will be leading the Bulldogs for the 2020 season, a season in which he hopes to claim his 9th state title. 

The plan for the new consolidated school is to build a new sports complex alongside the high school, complete with a new football stadium. This means that the historic Murphy football field named after David Gentry will be no more, and that seems to be okay with him, as he told the Citizen Times that he hopes the new school will build new traditions.