CARBONDALE — It’s game week for high school football teams in Illinois.

Yes, in mid-March, it’s time for high school football.

“Everything is weird,” said Carbondale head football coach Bryan Lee. “It’s been a weird year. School is weird. Work is weird, but we’re gonna have football. We’re gonna get to do the things we’ve worked hard to do. All those plan we’ve had for a year, we get to implement them. That’s exciting no matter what.”

According to Lee, just getting to this point has been quite an adventure. The coaches and players have been on a roller coaster–first the season was moved to the spring, but even then, there was still a cloud of doubt that it would be played.

Then football was given the green light, but the season was pushed back a few weeks–with the start of practice overlapping with the end of basketball.

“We scheduled every football workout after basketball, giving them the option to come out here,” Lee said. “Sometimes we’d practice out in that cold–21 degree wind chill one night–at 7:00 so we could get our basketball kids. That’s why we got into the habit of feeding them. They’d come out, they’d grab their sack lunch, they’d eat, then they’d go through a full football practice.”

Whether it was unusual practice times or worrying about wind chills, Lee says none of that matters now.

“It’s been really hard on this senior class,” Lee said. “They kinda got caught up in this last year. So all their spring sports–they were canceled. They didn’t have a prom. They’ve just been without. Some of our kids, what happens here on Friday night is a really big deal and something they will keep with them forever, so the fact that we get to do that is fantastic.”

The Terriers have a load of returning talent, but there have been hurdles.

“We’re very fortunate to have the kids that we have–our senior leadership,” Lee said. “Our backfield’s back with Darius Ragland who threw for almost 2000 yards last year. Gabe Hilliard as a sophomore rushed for 1100. Those are pretty dynamic kids. Most of our offensive line is back. One of the casualties of Covid is grades. We’ve lost some kids for eligibility, and I imagine that is probably the standard for a lot of schools. Remote learning has been hard.”

Carbondale will open Friday night at home against a rival. It’s not against traditional Jackson County rival Murphysboro, but another M school–South 7 rival Marion.

Lee said it came about “like hey if you don’t have a date for the prom, and I don’t have a date for the prom two weeks before, would you go with us? That’s what it was–we agreed that we will look for opponents. If we cant’ find them, let’s make sure our kids play six games instead of five, even if it means opening with your conference rival.”

Carbondale and Marion, along with Cahokia, shared the South 7 title last season. This season, the first installment of Terriers and Wildcats will not be a conference game.

That’s unlikely to matter.