Are Your Area HS Football Games Regularly Played On Saturdays....?

Hello Fellow SportsJournalists.com regulars --

I am looking for a little help with info for a potential column I may be writing either at the end of the current school year and/or one for the fall.

Could you tell me if there are any High Schools in your coverage areas that play their regular season football games on Saturdays? And if so, for what particular or specific reason...? And, if you could, could you mention the region/city/state of these teams? I would appreciate it.

In my area, the University stadium one area team uses is being renovated, causing the local HS team that uses it to play at another stadium on Saturdays for the next two seasons.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated. Thanks.

<NOTE TO BOARD MODERATORS: If I have placed this item in the wrong category, please feel free to move it. I was not *exactly sure* where I should have put this, so I took a stab at the most likely category. Thanks.>

 

In our 47-school area of central Pennsylvania, we have two teams that play Saturday games. They're the two Harrisburg city schools -- Bishop McDevitt and Harrisburg.

The parochial school, one of the state's powers, plays 10:30 a.m. games in its little bandbox tucked behind the school. It's a "family" thing, an experience for everyone associated with the school. Kids grow up with the dream of playing Saturday morning at the "dirt pile."

The city public school has always played Saturday afternoon games. Friday night games were never a consideration for the school, even though they have a nice turf field. There has been a past history of vandalism and violence in night games.

Oh, yes. One other thing. On the rare occasion when both Hershey and Lower Dauphin high schools are scheduled for a home game on a weekend at Hersheypark Stadium -- both teams' home field -- one of them has to move to Saturday night. Same thing with Central Dauphin and Central Dauphin East, sharing Landis Field.

Twenty to 30 years ago, many more of the schools played Saturday afternoon or night. One by one, they moved to Friday night.

 

Only in certain instances -- like "bowl" games -- are HS games played on Saturdays around here.

 

South Mississippi here. We have one of our larger schools that has started scheduling its first two home games of the season on Saturday. They just opened a big new stadium, and they get a couple of top-flight teams from another part of the state to come in for those two games.

Prep football here starts the third week in August (which is too early IMO, but it is what it is) so those two Saturdays are pretty open with colleges not starting until after the first of September. After the colleges start, though, it's strictly preps on Friday nights, with a few Thursday night games thrown in here and there.

 

The SF Bay Area always plays a pretty healthy slate of Saturday games -- not with the top programs but with the second tier -- because the stadiums don't have lights. It's largely a matter of funding, but there are also NIMBY-related concerns; the school near me was threatened with a lawsuit by the neighbors who suddenly didn't like noise 20 years after they bought their house next to a high school. (But I digress.) There have been a couple of other cases like that too.

 

Best shot I found of the Bishop McDevitt Saturday morning experience. It becomes like a holy war to these kids.

 

I'd guess roughly half the teams in my area play Saturday games and they're mostly the smaller schools that do not have lighted fields. I can think of one that plays probably three or four of its five home games on Saturday afternoons even though it has lights, but they were only installed about 10 years ago, so the school has traditionally played Saturday afternoon games.

 

A number of private and military schools in Georgia have (or had) stadiums without lights. Their home games were always on Saturdays, usually in the afternoon.

 

Friday-Night-Lights
Nope. I can only think of 3-4 instances dating back to before my high school days (so, in the last 30 years) that I remember anyone playing on Saturday, and that usually followed some completely off the charts weather the night before.

 

Most of the schools that play on Saturdays (or even Sundays) do it because they don't have their own field. Most of those are Catholic schools and either don't have the space on site for a field or don't have lights.

They end up sharing with the public school in their city, which of course will have their games on Friday night.


A lot of Detroit Public schools have to share stadiums, because they can't maintain fields for every school. Games usually start at 5 p.m., instead of the traditional 7 or 7:30. Because of that and the sharing of fields, some Detroit schools have to play on Saturday afternoons.

 

I would say our AP state scoreboard on Saturdays has 30-40 scores on it. And like Hank alluded to, a lot of them seem to be Catholic schools.

 

Not all, though. I believe Riverview High School, which plays at Riverside Park in Oakmont, still plays Saturday games. That was the case before I moved away about eight years go. I believe Riverside Park is owned by the town, not the school, so that may be part of the reason. Now you've got me curious to find out why they never put in lights.