If you are looking for the Bishop Guilfoyle junior high football schedule in the Mirror's football tabloid that comes out next Tuesday, don't bother.
There isn't one.
Guilfoyle has cancelled all of its ninth-grade games. The Laurel Highlands Conference is going to a two-team junior high setup this year. While most of the member schools are fielding ninth-grade teams and a team for the younger kids, the Marauders instead decided to go with eighth and combined eighth and seventh-grade squads.
All of Guilfoyle's freshmen players have been moved up, pushing the numbers on the varsity roster to more than 40.
Where to go
The Heritage Conference and the WestPAC - both with an odd number of members - have decided to do a football co-op in which the teams in the respective leagues will play each other on their open dates. Some of them have already started.
The loser in all of this could be Chestnut Ridge. An independent since being forced out of the ICC and aborting its entry into the Mountain Conference, Ridge helped fill its schedule with open WestPAC schools.
Next year, that won't be an option.
The Lions have six varsity games scheduled for 2012 and 2013 - one against Bedford, two against Cumberland, Md. schools and three against Mountain League teams.
The Mountain League could be Ridge's saving grace. With its nearby Mifflin County schools having departed, there have been rumblings that Juniata will leave the loop in the not-too-distant future. Barring other defections or force-outs, Ridge might be a quick fix to fill Juniata's vacancy.
Private issue
With high school sports starting up again, it's inevitable that the public-private school debate soon will rage again.
I attended and coached at a public school but always liked the idea of competing against anyone and seeing who really was the best, whatever their perceived advantages. With that in mind, I always hoped the sides could find some kind of a compromise; the multiplier system was one of the better ones.
While on assignment for Alleghenies Adventure recently, though, an administrator from an eastern Pa. public school relayed an idea to have the private schools and public schools split for classifying purposes. The largest 25 percent in each would be Class AAAA, the next 25 percent Class AAA and so on. Then they'd be put back together by those classifications.
It's worth exploring, if the sides can step out of their trenches for a bit.
Good reading
The Pennsylvania Football News Resource Guide is available, with almost 400 pages of information for hard core state football fans. It can be purchased at www.pafootballnews.com for $27.
Cmor can be reached at 946-7440 or pcmor@altoonamirror.com.
