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| North Central (Ill.) quarterback Dylan Warden and Wesley tight end Kyle George won't be on the field at the same time, but both should be key factors when their teams meet. d3photography.com photos by Steve Frommell, Dan Harris |
It shouldn't be this hard to schedule in Division III football. But sometimes it takes until July to complete a schedule.
Wesley, which joins the New Jersey Athletic Conference this season, went from zero conference games to nine, but finding even one opponent willing and available to play the Wolverines this season proved problematic. So Wesley ended up keeping one of last year's non-Division III opponents, Virginia-Lynchburg, on the schedule.
Hardly ideal. But then the NCAA came out and said recently that games against a certain classification of schools that don't meet some basic requirements would no longer count toward a team's record or stats. That group includes teams such as College of Faith and Virginia-Lynchburg.
On the other side, North Central had been sitting on nine games for quite some time. The last time a team from the CCIW scheduled just nine games was back in the late '90s, when it was a conference rule. Eventually, North Central and Wesley agreed to play each other. The teams will meet in Naperville, Ill., on Sept. 26, in a matchup of what is likely to be Top 10 teams in the D3football.com Top 25 preseason poll. The preseason poll will be released within the next week.
"We are extremely excited to add North Central to our schedule," said Wesley coach and athletic director Mike Drass. "[North Central] is a top 10 caliber team and this should be a great strength of schedule game."
Wesley finished last season 12-2, with the losses coming to Mount Union and Division I-FCS Charlotte. The Wolverines have gone 114-18 in the past decade. North Central has had similar success, going 98-20 over that same span.
Louisiana College was in a similar situation and has removed College of Faith from its schedule. (Also, coincidentally, on Sept. 26.) The Wildcats will play Division II non-scholarship Kentucky Wesleyan on that date.