The recent trend with athletic conferences is that they all seem to be growing and taking a turn towards "super conference" status.

In college sports, the PAC 12, BIG 10, and ACC have all added teams in recent years to boost the competitiveness within the conference.Locally, the Mountain Valley Conference and Lehigh Valley Conference have combined to create the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, which will begin competition for the 2014-15 school year.Now, it seems that the Anthracite Football League and the Schuylkill League are headed down the same path.Lehighton and Blue Mountain will join the AFL for the 2014-15 season with Lehighton also joining the Schuylkill League in all other sports, except for field hockey, where they will play an independent schedule.In the 2016-17 season, Pottsville will join the AFL, bringing the league to 12 teams, creating a six team AA/AAA big school division and a six team small school division.In the big school division, the teams will be Pottsville, Blue Mountain, North Schuylkill, Tamaqua, Lehighton, and Jim Thorpe.In the small school division, it will be Marian, Mahanoy Area, Schuylkill Haven, Minersville, Shenandoah Valley, and Panther Valley.The six and six format seems to benefit both the big schools and the small schools after years of struggles trying to find the right chemistry in order for everyone in the league to have a fair chance at qualifying for the District 11 playoffs.However, it's possible that the AFL and Schuykill League aren't finished expanding. Recent articles in the Citizens Voice and Shamokin News Item publications have reported that Mount Carmel and Berwick are interested in joining the AFL and Schuylkill league.According to AFL President and Tamaqua Principal Stephen Toth, Mount Carmel has been extended an invite to join the leagues, but Berwick has been sent no such offer and has not reached out to the AFL in any manner about joining. Mount Carmel is set to vote on whether or not to join on June 30."In the past I believe the Schuylkill League and AFL just couldn't get together to get the football side straightened out and we're working towards that now," said Toth. "We've extended an invite to Mount Carmel and they will vote on whether to join on June 30. We have not extended an invite to Berwick as of yet, and they have not reached out to us at all in joining our league."Lehighton, which made the jump from the MVC to the AFL and Schuylkill League in order to play more localized teams is now seeing a super league formed. If the expansion continues it looks like the Indians will possibly have to play some teams that are pretty far away geographically."Nothing with Mount Carmel and Berwick is official, so I can't really comment on that just yet," said Lehighton athletic director Kyle Spotts. "With the additions of Blue Mountain and Pottsville to the AFL we're happy to be playing schools with same AAA classification that we would have to end up playing if we make the postseason anyway. I think it's just a testament to the teams we have in the league, that other high caliber schools allegedly want to join."Things seem to be shaping up nicely for the AFL league, but what about the small schools? If Mount Carmel (AA) and Berwick (AAA) do end up joining, which are two schools that would join the big school division, how would the schedules be set for the small schools? That's a question that will need to be answered before anymore expansion can be discussed."I think through all this everyone has done a good job keeping the original members together from the Anthracite 8 days even with the differences in enrollment," said Marian head football coach and athletic director Stan Dakosty. "President Toth has done a fantastic job navigating us through this transition and I'm sure that will continue. As far as the scheduling with the smaller schools, we haven't really talked about that yet. I don't know if we'll play crossover games or if our small schools will even want to play a crossover schedule with the bigger schools. That's something that will be answered before we expand any further."If Berwick and Mount Carmel did join the AFL then it would most likely be an eight team big school league and six team small school league unless one of the bigger schools drastically drops in enrollment before the 2016-17 cycle begins. Either way it will certainly be interesting to see how everything unfolds.