DANIELSVILLE - If you've been around for a while, the name East Penn Conference definitely rings a bell.

At its initial press conference held at Woodstone Country Club on Wednesday, what is now called the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, ended months of speculation, unveiled its new logo and introduced its officers, members and 2014-15 schedules to the media.EPC president and Whitehall principal Chris Schiffert opened the presentation by turning it over to two student athletes from each of the 18 schools."This is all about our student-athletes," he noted. "Everything we do is to benefit them and that's why this is so important."Pleasant Valley, the lone Times News Area school, is part of the new league along with five other Mountain Valley Conference schools. The Bears were represented by Abby Rosella and Nyem Nevarez."We had a choice," said Pleasant Valley athletic director Jake Percey when asked if the Bears checked out any other offers. "We were sad to see Lehighton go because we had a nice little league. But at the same time we needed to allow our kids to have an opportunity to compete in a bigger stage and this gave us the opportunity to do that."The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference is going to be great. Eighteen teams, strong teams, so we're really looking forward to it.When Lehighton decided to opt out of the MVC and join the Schuylkill League and Anthracite Football League, it left the Monroe County based league with just five teams.There will be five different divisional setups depending on the sport. The league brass put in a lot of time making sure established rivalries stayed in place and there was as much parity as possible.In football, the conference will have a closed schedule with two nine-team divisions plus two crossover games. Except on Thanksgiving, there will be no non-conference contests.In one division, it will be the six MVC schools with Allen, Dieruff and Bethlehem Catholic. The other division will be comprised of Easton, Freedom, Liberty, Central Catholic, Emmaus, Nazareth, Northampton, Parkland and Whitehall.Three divisions will be used in most other sports with the six MVC teams comprising one division. 16 conference games will be played (10 division, six crossover, three from each division). The crossover games will rotate in a four-year cycle to assure everybody plays at least once in that span.For post-season league playoffs, eight of the 18 teams will qualify. The three division winners will qualify with all ties being broken by divisional records only. The teams with the best five conference records will fill out the bracket.Wrestling will use a three division setup determined by records from the previous year. Teams will wrestle five divisional matches and four crossovers, two from each division. As of this time, there will not be a conference tournament.The conference looks to be big in social media and has purchased the rights to the Internet domain, epc18.org. So you can look for the EPC on the web and eventually on Facebook and Twitter."We already had a lot of these teams on our schedule," Percey added. "I bet we'll have just as many LVC teams on our schedule as we did before. Plus we'll get to keep our same rivalry having the other MVC teams in our division."The Bears will open their EPC football season on Friday, August 29 at home against Easton.