Many students here at Waverly High School also call themselves student athletes.  Whether you’re a captain of the football team or a junior varsity softball player, we all lay claim to the same student athlete title.  For many the process is familiar, showing up to practice and getting a schedule of who you will compete against during the season, but who or what decides who we play.  I sat down with Mr. Bo Arnett, athletic director here at the high school to discuss just what goes into making a season’s schedule. Most people will know football season the best and so that is mostly what we’re talking about here, however it’s easy to say that many of these same methods are used for all sports.

With an almost infinite list of various other schools to play how do we determine, and with only 10 weeks in the regular season, who to play.  It’s actually very simple “The OHSAA has a website for athletic directors where schools can post what weeks they are available, from there we are free to call or email the schools we might be interested in playing,” explained Arnett.  For instance, weeks one and two of the 2022 football season saw the Tigers travelling to Miami Trace and Johnstown Monroe, you may also recognize these names from the 2021 schedule when we faced these same teams here at home.  These two games were set up thanks to this website like many others and the reason for playing two years in a row is because of the “home and home” agreement.  This is simply to make it fair for both teams so that each one has to travel to the other in consecutive years.

While these first five weeks of the season are reserved for teams that are outside of our conference, which in some cases such as week 5 against Johnson Central, may be up to three hours away, the last 5 weeks are all conference play.  These games are used to determine the winner of the Southern Ohio Conference, home to Waverly, Wheelersburg, Minford, Portsmouth West and a handful of other smaller schools.  It is important to note that many of these games are scheduled multiple years in advance, so as of right now the 2025 schedule is already being formulated.  Also keep in mind that while football is scheduled for in advance, other sports are scheduled that year, but the scheduling methods remain largely the same.