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Or should that be flying?
An old friend will be back on the Brookville Raiders football schedule thanks to the Keystone Shortway Athletic Conference adding the St. Marys Flying Dutchmen as a football-only member starting in 2010.
That bumped the KSAC football schools to 11, forcing the conference to split into two divisions, a small school and big school, with two champions crowned at the end of the season.
The five-team big school division consists of the Raiders, Dutch, Punxsutawney, Moniteau and Karns City while the six-team small school division has the rest with Clarion, Clarion-Limestone, Redbank Valley, Keystone and A-C Valley.
As far as schedule goes, teams must play all of their division opponents and up to four opponents from the other division. In the big school division, that would still allow teams to add one non-conference game to their schedule. In Brookville's case, it appears to be a trip to DuBois in Week 5, assuming the Beavers get approval from District 10.
So for the Raiders, it's three former District 9 League opponents back on the schedule, which at this point has just nine games with no game on Week 10. Raiders head coach Chris Dworek was ecstatic as his team will play the Dutch after a two-year hiatus.
"It was great to see that people from the KSAC were willing to help out a fellow D-9 school by adding St. Marys and ultimately cementing the conference into a tough, challenging and solid football conference," Dworek said. "Plus, they got a first-class coach who runs a first-class, tough-as-nails football program."
St. Marys looked into joining the KSAC a few years ago, but it didn't happen and it headed to the Mountain Athletic Conference with Clearfield and DuBois in District 6.
"Although our experience in the MAC was a positive, the travel distances created problems for parents and fans, and made it difficult for rivalries to develop," St. Marys head coach Joe Schlimm said. "It created a lot of strain on our JV and junior high programs."
A home in District 9 was something the Dutch wanted all along.
"It's where we wanted to go two years ago when the District 9 League folded," Schlimm said. "I appreciate the efforts of all the member schools that have come to our assistance and have welcomed us into their conference."
The Dutch appear to also have a non-conference date with DuBois in Week 7.
Another part of the scheduling arrangement in the newly-expanded KSAC allows for teams involved in the crossover matchups to mutually agree to not schedule each other. That can be tricky considering the difficulty of scheduling non-conference games.
So far, the only known situation where that will happen is Karns City and Union's scheduled Week 2 matchup, which has been scratched.
Clarion-Limestone, according to athletic director Wendy Young, will play its inherited nine-game schedule with no opting out. According to KSAC rules, both teams have to agree to canceling a crossover game.
Not on the Raiders schedule this year is Union and Redbank Valley. Those teams will cycle into the schedule in 2012 and two other teams will cycle out. The only team not on C-L's schedule the next two years is Moniteau. That would change to two different teams in 2012.
