One division, two divisions; crossover game, conference game; Week 1, Week 9.
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None of it really matters to Tyler Pennington.
Cary-Grove will be facing Prairie Ridge in football. Enough, as far as Pennington is concerned, said.
“Cary-Grove—Prairie Ridge,” said Pennington, who will begin his fourth varsity season for Cary-Grove when the No. 14 Trojans host the No. 15 Wolves in a marquee opening-night matchup Friday.
“I wouldn’t say being in the same conference now puts more on the game. The schools are five minutes from each other. Up here that is the rivalry.”
The rivalry is now also a key conference matchup because the Fox Valley Conference, like several others in the Chicago area, went through some changes in the offseason.
Four schools departed to join new conferences — Woodstock and Woodstock North are part of the Kishwaukee River, while Grayslake North and Grayslake Central joined six former North Suburban Prairie schools in the Northern Lake County — the nine remaining Fox Valley teams scrapped their two-division format.
Conference restructuring is an ongoing issue in Illinois as schools continue to try to join schools with similar enrollments.
To bigger schools, the benefit of two divisions is guaranteed crossover games, making the schedule easier to fill out.
Crossover games are often an issue for smaller schools, because a minimum 5-4 record is required to make the playoffs, and games against bigger schools can be almost automatic losses.
In addition to the Fox Valley, the North Suburban and the Southwest Suburban will go from two divisions to one this year following departures, and they had to get creative to fill out their schedules.
The Fox Valley created a series of games against Upstate Eight teams. The Mid-Suburban and Central Suburban have a similar but more structured agreement.
The Southwest Suburban, now a soup-to-nuts collection of 13 following the closing of Lincoln-Way North and the departure of Joliet Central and Joliet West, came up with a three-tiered structure that forced its power trio of No. 2 Lincoln-Way East, No. 6 Homewood-Flossmoor and Bolingbrook to either find an out-of-state opponent, or in Bolingbrook’s case, schedule two defending state champions.
“It seems like the more we try to level the playing field, the worse we get at it,” said Prairie Ridge coach Chris Schremp, whose Wolves reached the Class 6A semifinals last season and return much of their core, including star quarterback Samson Evans.
“For us at Prairie Ridge, we become the smallest school in our conference. Now I don’t so much see an issue with us competing on the varsity level, because we’ve got a solid program. I worry about our lower level competing with 8A schools, our group of 30-35 freshman playing against a school with 80-90 freshmen.
“It’s tough to compete. It is the same reason all the schools left our conference.”
The positive side is none of this matters to Pennington, Evans or anybody who will be strapping on pads and lacing up cleats on Friday night.
These are problems for adults to worry about. They’re playing football for at least the next nine Friday nights.
“You just play,” Pennington said. “You don’t care who’s in front of you. You just try to execute your job. If you play two more conference games, you don’t care. You just try to win those games.”
Mike Helfgot is a freelance reporter for the baiduhai.
No. 15 Prairie Ridge at No. 14 Cary-Grove
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When: 7 p.m. Friday in Cary.
2015: Cary-Grove won 21-14 in Week 1.