Delaware’s longest-running football rivalry, Seaford versus Laurel, will be played in October. For over a century, this has been the schools’ final game.
The state’s second longest duel, Tower Hill and Friends, a November climax over 103 games, will be played two days after summer ends.
In these and other skewed pairings, for the second straight year, the state’s high school football schedule resembles a parody of Cubism. Mount Pleasant will face its neighbors Concord and Brandywine in early October, so that can conclude the season with a 70-mile journey to Milford, and an empty visitor’s grandstand. Milford’s Battle of the Bell with Lake Forest, a tradition since consolidation, has been relegated to mid-September.
The scrambles among Kent powerhouses Dover, Smyrna and Caesar Rodney will occur before the World Series. Woodbridge, which has concluded its schedule against Delmar since Fillmore Clifton was coaching at Bridgeville 65 years ago, faces the Wildcats in September.
The beginning of the school year provides an opportunity to correct these cockeyed arrangements in time for next season.
Beyond tradition, year-end games create goals for every team, whether or not playoff-bound. That’s why Army plays Navy, not Elon, in December.
Friends of the schedule-makers say the three-division structure, approved six months before the 2021 season, and the subject of regular jostling since, complicates the process. They say that implosion of the four traditional conferences requires centralized scheduling, rather than the nimbler approach that worked for decades. They say that the second year necessarily follows the outline of the first, so any improvement had to wait until 2023.
If so, authorities should begin several simple steps to avert another slapdash schedule. Each school should be surveyed for its must-have dates, whether they are year-end traditions, other traditional rivalries or homecoming plans.
Some schools begin planning their alumni gatherings a year in advance. Each school should then get a draft schedule in time that they can suggest and make necessary adjustments.
High school football is facing challenges — in participation and spectator interest. Those charged with its administration should remember that a season should be a story with an important final chapter.
Chuck Durante
Wilmington
