Interesting South Dakota Class 11AAA Football Scheduling Quirks for 2019

High school football season is quickly approaching, and Class 11AAA will see a balanced round-robin schedule. Here are some of the interesting scheduling storylines.

Aberdeen Central, Brandon Valley, Harrisburg, O'Gorman, Rapid City Central, Rapid City Stevens, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Washington, and Watertown will be the 10 teams playing in Class 11AAA in 2019 and 2020. Each team will play each other one time during the regular season. The playoffs will consist of the top eight schools based on win/loss record.

With the round-robin format and nine total regular-season games, a schedule that sets up perfectly for everyone is impossible to obtain. Some schools like Lincoln and Washington have a schedule that could be considered as close to balanced as possible. Other schools will have some obstacles to potentially overcome. Here's a look at some of the scheduling quirks of the 2019 season.

• Aberdeen Central: Three longest road trips of the season take place on consecutive weeks during Weeks 2-4 (@ RCC, @ BV, @ Harrisburg)
• Brandon Valley: The Lynx will only leave the area one time during the season. That will be in Week 4 when they travel to RCC. All other road games are at Howard Wood Field or Harrisburg.
• Harrisburg: The Tigers will spend Week 1 in Rapid City, but then every game after that will be played at either home or in Sioux Falls.
• O'Gorman: The Knights will spend five straight weeks (Week 2-6) in Sioux Falls. Three of those will be at Howard Wood Field (including Dakota Bowl) and two will be played on their campus.
• Rapid City Central: The Cobblers will make back-to-back trips to Sioux Falls during the last two weeks of the regular season.
• Rapid City Stevens: RCS will come to Harrisburg and Sioux Falls during weeks 3-4. Otherwise, RCS' schedule is balanced almost as fair as it can be.
• Lincoln: Schedule is as balanced as possible with all three big road trips spread between Week 1, 4, and 8.
• Washington: Schedule is as balanced as possible with the two longest road trips to Aberdeen and Rapid City Stevens scheduled in Weeks 1 and 5. Warriors go to Harrisburg and Brandon for other road games.
• Watertown: The Arrows will make three consecutive trips to the Sioux Falls metro area when they play Washington, Brandon Valley, and Harrisburg during weeks 4-6.

There is no perfect system for scheduling these games for everyone, but what makes it almost perfect is that the schedules flip home/away in 2020. So these scheduling quirks that seem to give teams an advantage or disadvantage this year will flip around for next year.

Either way...the fact that we have a balanced round-robin Class 11AAA schedule is a win all together.