Wiscasset’s school committee made it official Tuesday night: Boothbay Region High School boys can participate on the Wolverine boys’ soccer team this season. Details of the agreement are being left to the schools’ athletic directors to work out.

The two longtime athletic rivals will also combine their cross-country running programs. BRHS will let Wiscasset Middle High School boys take part in the Seahawk football program, while WMHS girls can play on BRHS’s field hockey team.

The deal comes as both high schools struggle with declining enrollment. This past school year, WMHS dropped to class D athletic status. BRHS continues to compete at the higher, class C level, although its student numbers have also fallen.

Chris Cossette, coach of the Wolverine varsity soccer team, welcomed the change. “They’d definitely be an asset to our program,” he told the Wiscasset Newspaper. On Monday evening, Aug. 13, the first night of tryouts for the upcoming Mountain Valley Conference soccer season, Cossette said he had 14 boys turn out, none from Boothbay. About five to six high school players from Boothbay played summer soccer for Cossette. He said he’d reached out to several of them before Monday’s practice.

The change only effects the boys’ soccer team since BRHS has a girls’ soccer program of its own.

WMHS has been without an athletic director since last spring following the resignation of Assistant Principal Mandy Lewis. The past few years the school department has combined the jobs. Vicki Decker of Lyman was hired as WMHS’s assistant principal-athletic director Tuesday night. The school committee is considering having a staff member share the  athletic director’s duties with Lyman.