The high school football season is in full swing, and many games during the opening weeks have proved to be eventful.

Whether people pay attention or not, most of those contests have been non-league matchups.

With this the first year that the Colonial-Schuylkill League co-op is no longer in effect, there have been some different opponents for area teams. In fact, none of the nine Times News clubs played the same school they did a year ago in Week 1.

How did this come about? How are those non-league games scheduled?

Believe it or not, just like in college, the slate for most schools was put together well in advance.

When the vote in 2024 passed that the Colonial and Schuylkill leagues would go their separate ways, athletic directors wasted no time in trying to find gridiron partners.

Panther Valley Athletic Director Kristin Black clearly remembers that day.

“As soon as that was voted on that is what we were doing, I don’t even want to say the very next day, I want to say in that room I probably picked up three non-league games,” said Black. “It’s always a good game for us and Minersville, I wanted Marian back on the schedule, Shenandoah is a no-brainer for us and them, so it was literally when the vote went down, boom, we were looking for non-league games within that time frame.

“We voted and we all looked at each other, and phones went crazy.”

While Black and the Panthers were forced to fill a number of holes in their schedule, ADs in the Colonial didn’t face the same dilemma. With the league having definitive crossover games, those schools only needed to pick up two teams.

“The way that worked out with the leagues going their own route, it provided enough time for the schools to reach out and schedule some non-league opponents and have those discussions ahead of time,” said Lehighton AD Kyle Spotts. “This year, (crossovers with Palmerton and Northern Lehigh) were made for us. Those crossovers were kind of scheduled for us ... And the rest of the league schedule kind of played itself out so we only had to look for two (non-league games).”

So, what do athletic directors look for in finding those out-of-league foes?

Those answers vary, but are fairly obvious.

“We, at this point at Panther Valley, like to try and schedule non-league games that we will be competitive in,” said Black. “However, I do know that there is a deadline that we want to get games in, and if we’re at that deadline then we might have to go with somebody that we didn’t want to fill the schedule.

“It is extremely hard to sometimes fill a non-league schedule, extremely hard. When I found out that we had to get as many games as we had to get, I almost panicked. I didn’t know what to do, because that’s a lot of games that we have to pick up. It’s not like every other sport where you can just pick up anybody.”

Black, besides getting some familiar teams from the league’s other division, also added Nanticoke and Tunkhannock — two schools more on PV’s level.

“Most of the schedule was done, I needed two games, and ... I know a lot of athletic directors in the state of Pennsylvania because I work for the Pennsylvania State Athletic Directors Association (PSADA) so I feel like I have an advantage because I know more athletic directors than your normal athletic director would because I work for the state of Pennsylvania through the athletic directors.

“I knew who the assigners were for District 2, so I called the assigner and said, ‘Hey, we’re looking to play, we’re looking to be competitive, and he sent me two names and that’s who I went with.”

For Spotts, things couldn’t have worked out any better than they did. He was able to get an area rival and a bigger school they’ve played in the past — exactly what they were looking for.

“We were looking for a local rivalry game that’s going to be competitive which the Tamaqua game is year in and year out,” he said. “And then we were looking for a slightly bigger school ... that would be a competitive game so that’s how we kind of settled on Pocono Mountain West.

“It’s definitely not a perfect science ... because the quality of teams changes from year to year. That’s why I think the local proximity makes a lot of sense because it’s always going to be a game that’s close, meaningful, and I love that it’s Week 1 with Tamaqua because everybody is optimistic about the season. We had a great crowd here that Friday, it was good weather, so it’s always a good opener to schedule that. And the other one just materialized the way it did.”

Both Black and Spotts, and likely many of the other ADs, get input from their head coaches before making things official.

“I do get all of my input from my coach,” said Black. “I really do not schedule anything unless I speak with him.”

“There’s always a discussion with any of my coaches as far as non-league schedules go,” added Spotts. “Coach (Tom) McCarroll and I got together and discussed possible schools that we might be interested in playing. And it got to a handful of schools that seemed interested and what we can make work, and that’s kind of how it materialized.”

But the key, as mentioned before, was to start early in getting the open dates filled.

“Other leagues don’t do it like this,” said Black. “Other leagues have an assigner that they do everything. And they have no non-league games, and then there’s other ones who do it the way we do it. Some people, they wait for a year. They’re nuts. You’ve got to get them when you can get them. My schedule has been set for a good two years.”

“We found it pretty quick,” said Spotts. “We were able to have those discussions pretty quickly and got a jump on it earlier than maybe some schools did .. That’s why you get a jump on football, the earlier the better. Football is a little different animal than the other sports to just pick up a non-league game.”