Fans of University High football have had to adjust their schedules and their mindsets about when their team played games this season. Because of the $25 million renovation being done to 50-year-old Hancock Stadium, Pioneers fans have watched Saturday games this season.
The need to move games to Saturdays was not just sprung on the Pioneers. The Hancock revamp was approved by Illinois State University’s Board of Trustees in February, so there was time to prepare.
Wendy Smith, U-High’s Athletic Director, told me over the summer she thought “the core group of fans will still be there.” From what I saw at games I’ve covered this season, I say she was right about that – there were a good number of fans in the stands – especially for the Pioneers’ Homecoming a couple weeks ago.
Smith said the change to Saturday games would impact students who were involved in marching band competitions (regularly held on Saturdays). Those kids would not be at football games on competition dates, she explained.
It also meant juggling sophomore football games to early in the next week after the varsity had played, Smith said. At the time, she thought those games would be moved to Mondays because, typically, Monday is an off-day for the primary residents of Hancock Stadium – the ISU Redbirds football team.
The only other big change is that the Pioneers will play their game against Rantoul this Friday at Tucci Stadium on the Illinois Wesleyan University campus. Game time is slated for 7p.m.
Smith said scheduling games with opponents wasn’t a problem under the current circumstances. “Visiting teams knew our situation and no one said anything negative to me,” she said.
As it turns out, U-High was not the only local team playing on Saturdays this year. Bloomington High School recently hosted Chicago St. Patrick High School for an early Saturday matchup a couple weeks ago. In the region of central Illinois, two schools – Peoria Heights High School and Metamora High School – normally have Saturday games on their schedules.
I belong to a sportswriters’ bulletin board website and posed the question of where else were regular season Saturday games played as a rule, not the exception. I discovered the game is a Saturday staple from Massachusetts to Hawaii and everywhere in-between.
The sportswriters who frequent this bulletin board, for the most part, use nicknames or handles to identify themselves (a “names changed to protect the not-so-innocent,” — in this case — if you’re familiar with sportswriters).
“In Georgia,” one respondent wrote, “Private and military schools have had their stadiums without lights, so their home games were on Saturdays, usually in the afternoon.”
On the Hawaiian Island of Kauai, games were moved to Saturdays, one respondent wrote, “because the football lights confused endangered birds in the area, who would get lost and dive into the water…” The New York Times, it turns out, even did an article about that, I later saw.
Another writer reported to me that Michigan “has 80% games on Friday nights with a handful on Saturdays.” This respondent said schools without lights at their fields also play on Friday afternoons. Lack of lights also forces small high schools to play day games on Saturdays in parts of the Albany, N.Y. area, another fellow scribe informed me.
It was interesting to read the some 70-plus replies my inquiry produced. It also sounds as though everyone looks forward to playing Saturdays, too – particularly from what I saw at the U-High games I attended this season.
I also would not have thought about teams who do not play under the lights regularly. The replies I got were eye-opening and informative.