When MSL officials announced the new alignment for the conference beginning in the 2013-14 school year, the level of competition in the MSL-Ohio Division for boys soccer was raised.

The division will be losing five high schools — Granville, Heath, Lakewood, Licking Valley and Newark Catholic — to the newly formed Licking County League and, pending approval, will be replacing those schools with Grandview, London, Madison Plains, West Jefferson and Worthington Christian.

“We’re looking forward to it,” Bexley boys soccer coach Greg Kullman said. “The division added a state championship-caliber team year in, year out (Worthington Christian) to what is already a pretty decent league. We’re losing a lot of soccer teams that were kind of in their infancy (Heath, Lakewood and Licking Valley) and we add (Worthington) Christian and Grandview, which are really quality programs.”

Bexley athletics director Molly Feesler, who was on the realignment committee, said the departure of the five MSL-Ohio schools as well as Licking Heights, which also will join the LCL, and Canal Winchester, which will join the Ohio Capital Conference, presented the MSL an opportunity to reconfigure.

“Trying to get that many different people to agree on where teams go in the league is not easy,” Feesler said. “We had a lot of teams who were interested in coming into the league, but we didn’t think they were a good fit because of their size or the distance away from the other schools.”

In addition to boys soccer, Bexley currently competes in the MSL-Ohio in baseball, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls cross country, football, boys golf, softball, boys and girls track and field, girls volleyball and wrestling.

The boys and girls swimming and diving teams compete in the MSL, the boys tennis, girls soccer and girls tennis teams are in the MSL-Cardinal/Ohio, the girls golf team competes in the Midwest Ohio Girls Golf League (MOGGL), the field hockey team is in the Central Ohio Field Hockey League and the girls lacrosse team competes in the Central Independent League.

The boys lacrosse team is not in a league.

The MSL realignment will put the boys soccer team and Worthington Christian, which won the 2011 Division III boys soccer state title with a 2-0 victory over Gates Mills Hawken in the state final, in the same league for the first time since the two schools were part of the Central Ohio Soccer League in the 1990s.

Worthington Christian, which also won state titles in 2006 and 2009, has been a consistent non-league opponent on the Lions’ schedule. Since 2003, Bexley is 3-3-2 against the Warriors, including a 3-0 loss in 2011. The Lions’ last victory over the Warriors came in 2007 (1-0).

Grandview was a Division III district champion in 2011 and a district finalist in 2001, 2002 and 2005.

The past four years, Bexley has gone 16-1-5 in MSL-Ohio play but has captured only one league championship. Kullman said realignment will make the league title even more difficult to win.

“Year in and year out, it’s going to make us focus harder and compete harder,” he said. “Hopefully that will prepare us even more for the postseason tournament.”

The football team, meanwhile, has struggled in the MSL-Ohio, compiling a 14-21 record in league play and finishing higher than fifth only once since 2007. In 2011, the Lions went 2-5 in the league to tie Heath for sixth, behind Granville (7-0), Licking Valley (6-1), Whitehall (4-3), Newark Catholic (4-3) and Columbus Academy (3-4) and ahead of Lakewood (0-7).

However, coach John Smith believes his team could benefit from the new alignment.

Since 2007, Bexley (second in 2008), Academy (first in 2009) and Whitehall (third in 2011) have finished in the top four of the MSL-Ohio once each. During that same span, Licking Valley has gone 31-4 in league play and has won three MSL-Ohio titles and Granville has gone 28-7 and has won one league title.

“I’m a little more excited (about the realignment) rather than having to play Licking Valley, Granville and Newark Catholic each year,” said Smith, whose team hasn’t won a league championship since 1997. “There are a lot of good football teams that are going to be coming into this league. I think there are going to be some natural rivalries there.”

The natural rivalries stem from the schools being in close proximity to one another. According to MapQuest.com, the five schools that will be leaving the league are between 25.29 and 36.94 miles from Bexley.

Under the new alignment, the Lions will travel 39.49 miles to Madison Plains and 32.12 miles to London, but the other three new league opponents would be less than 22 miles away: Grandview (8.78), West Jefferson (21.47) and Worthington Christian (14.12).

“We go from five long road trips to two long road trips,” girls basketball coach Jim Strode said. “That’s going to make a difference in the wintertime. On school nights, our kids won’t have to get home at 11 or 11:30 (p.m.) and do their homework. At the end of the day, it’s about the kids.”

Strode’s only concern with the new alignment is regarding school size. Currently, five of the seven schools in the MSL-Ohio are Division II programs in girls basketball. Under the new alignment, only Bexley, London and Whitehall would be in Division II. Academy, Grandview, Madison Plains and West Jefferson are in Division III and Worthington Christian is in Division IV.

“However, with teams having a 20-game schedule, we can add some larger schools on our schedule,” said Strode, who plans to play Granville in a non-league game beginning in 2013-14. “It’s not going to affect us that much.”