by John Selby ’15
Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, Maryland, and Canada. These states and one country represent the areas in which the Wildcat football team’s opponents’ high schools are located. And one of those schools – Eastern Christian Academy – is an online school.
The 2013 season has certainly been an anomaly for the football Cats. They’ve taken on seven out-of-state schools, and attendance has suffered as a result. Cold Saturday nights, when Byers Field would normally be filled with brisk air and the sounds of the crowd resonating through the stadium, instead have turned into afternoons at Byers Field in which the only noise comes from the quarter-full student section and the tambourine lady sitting two sections over.
“The scheduling of out of state teams comes out of necessity,” says Mr. Rory Fitzpatrick ’88, the school’s athletic administrator. “The reality is that there are only so many teams that are willing to play us during a given season.”
Mr. Fitzpatrick is in constant communication with athletic directors to work on the schedule, and although he says he would prefer to play a more local teams, scheduling out of state teams is just what needed to be done.
Many issues have arisen “out of” this “out of” state situation. For instance, to accommodate travel, most of these games were scheduled at afternoon times; this impacted crowd size dramatically as most students found trouble in being able to attend the games. Moreover, Mr. Fitzpatrick adds, “What is really lost is the chance to develop and maintain good local rivalries.” He cited the more recent rivalry against Mentor as an example saying, “It has become a must watch game for many area people.”
“In a way, [playing out of state teams] has made the season more interesting to me,” says senior kicker Matt Colella. “We’re used to playing most of the same teams year after year, so it’s kind of exciting to play teams we’ve never gone up against.”
Furthermore, playing schools, such as Eastern Christian Academy from Maryland, that have great football programs strengthens the Wildcats’ ability to play some of the more challenging teams in Ohio, such as Saint Edward (as they have already demonstrated) and some of the teams the Wildcats could hopefully face in the playoffs.
Most would agree that the Saint Ignatius-vs.-Saint Edward rivalry is one of the greatest rivalries in the state, and it would be nice to see this historic program get the chance to form new lasting rivalries that the next generation of Wildcats could experience. Mr. Fitzpatrick lastly stated, “…hopefully we will get that chance in the coming years.”
