Football scheduling. Sounds like a fun task, right?
You try to balance piecing together a challenging-enough slate to provide valuable postseason playoff points and experience whilst not overscheduling to the point of making things too difficult?
Now picture you’re located in the sliver of land in Northern West Virginia located between both Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Now throw in COVID-19 and its constantly swirling state of uncertainty. Don’t forget the three different governors and state-governing bodies, each with their own ideas on what works best for their respective populaces.
Scheduling can be fun but challenging on a good day. These days? Even the most rabid football fan might scoff at the chance to help navigate this mess.
Take the Oak Glen football schedule for example and the job Athletics Director Rich Shilling and head football coach Ted Arneault Jr. have done just getting it back to “nearly” full.
The Golden Bears’ current schedule is nine games strong. It was a challenge getting it to there.
It all started back before COVID when—as usually happens when a good team returns a majority of its talent—three teams dropped the Golden Bears back in January.
Arneault ironed out that problem.
Then in the last month or so, things really starting to get interesting.
To quote Coach Arneault … “Our game schedule has been a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.”
What fun indeed.
What initial changes needed to be made to your schedule, even before all the COVID-related necessitated updates in the last few weeks?
We had three teams opt-out of contracts for this year back in January. Overall, we felt like our schedule was in a good place. We picked up John Marshall, Brooke, and Wheeling Park and we picked up Allderdice and Perry from the Pittsburgh City League. We felt like it was a solid schedule moving forward.
What was the first major change that needed making? Did it come from Ohio or Pennsylvania?
In the last couple of weeks, we had four teams basically drop out on us. The WPIAL pushed back the start of its season and went to a seven-game schedule which eliminated the first three weeks of competition. We were supposed to play Allderdice and Perry in weeks two and three. Then West Virginia pushed its schedule back, and we lost our rival, Weir.
How did Ohio’s revamp of its schedule, starting the postseason in Week 7, affect things?
When Ohio put in its six-game schedule, that nullified the Harrison Central game, and then our other rival, East Liverpool, opted out of playing. I’ve been on the phone pretty much the last three weeks, scheduling games and finding open dates and trying to convince teams to move games to a time we can play.
Looking at some of the editions, it seems like you’re going to be making a tour of the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. But you were also able to get Weir back on the schedule. That’s probably not a game you want to lose.
Since last week, we’ve picked up Spring Mills, near Martinsburg, along with a road game at Frankfort, and we’re playing Keyser. We’re thrilled at the moment and lucky to have nine games right now. When things started, we were looking at four or five games. This is a challenging schedule with four AAA teams and seven that have made the playoffs in the last two years. Plus, we got Weir back. Harrison opted into playing in the postseason, so that opened up our Week 8 and that week, Weir had Edison, so we were able to link up.
But what about East Liverpool? That’s nearly as big of a rivalry as Weir.
We wish we were still playing against East Liverpool. The Battle of the Bridge is a big game every year, but they decided to play West Branch instead of us. It’s a rivalry game so we’re still scratching our heads on that one.
