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

[BNWriter]

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.>

 

[jr/shotglass]

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.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

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

 

[albert77]

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.

 

[LongTimeListener]

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.

 

[jr/shotglass]

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

 

[bigpern23]

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.

 

[buckweaver]

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.

 

[Shoeless Joe]

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.

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

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.

 

[jr/shotglass]

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.

 

[outofplace]

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.

 

[Yodel]

Out here in Hawaii, the Big Island also called Hawaii, in the county also called Hawaii, the games are split between Saturday and Friday. One school has no lights at its field, so its home games are always on Saturday. Others like it just to save money on turning on the lights.
But we also have several who play home games on Friday.

On Kauai, the games had to move to Saturday because the football lights confused endangered birds, who would get lost and die in the water, or something like that.

 

[TheHacker]

In the Baltimore-Washington corridor most of the games are Friday nights. A few of the private schools will play Saturday afternoons because they don't have lights. There's also one whole suburban D.C. county where most of the school fields don't have lights, so they play on Saturday by necessity. The D.C. city schools are a complete train wreck as far as sports, but ironically they have added field turf and lights there, so they can play Friday nights.

 

[Starman]

In Michigan, probably 80% of games are Friday night, with the rest Saturday with a handful on Sundays (usually Catholic schools as others mention). Some schools without lights, or with security problems, play games Friday afternoons.

The exception to this is when the season begins the weekend before Labor Day, most schools play their first games on Thursday night because parents don't want to give up their 3-day weekends.

Also, a few weeks into the season there is usually a spate of games shifted to Thursday for Yom Kippur (in schools in heavily Jewish communities).

So the answer is that games are more commonly played on Friday, but Saturdays are not unusual or remarkable.

 

[farmerjerome]

Around here it's weird. In one district everyone tries to play on Fridays unless their field is being updated. In fact, the boosters had to come in and "rescue" a perennial favorite from playing on Saturdays with a donations for lights.

During playoffs all bets are off. They could play on Fridays or Saturdays because there are only so many turf fields. For championships it goes by Syracuse's schedule. If Syracuse is away they usually stack all games on Saturdays starting at 9 a.m. If the Orange is home, some games are played on Friday and the next three on Sunday.

In another district our two teams play on Saturday. Some of their away games are on Friday, some are Saturday. It's not really a big deal in that district. Soccer is king there.

 

[apeman33]

I can't think of a high school field in Kansas that doesn't have lights. Shared-stadium situations are most often handled by having one team play Thursday. Saturday games happen in the playoffs. There might be Saturday games in the Shawnee Mission district which has five schools but I believe only one stadium.

 

[jr/shotglass]

I know that the Pittsburgh City League schools share one stadium, and there are, I think, eight of those schools. I don't know how they split up the games time-wise. Would be curious to know.

 

[93Devil]

Shenango High outside of **** Castle, PA used to always play home games on Saturday night because, I guess, going to **** Castle, Farrell or Neshannock was a better idea for most people on a Friday night.

 

[Yodel]

In Alabama, you don't play HS games on Saturday. I can't remember any cases of that happening. College football is king.