Football is back in Centre County as Mountain League teams are set to kick off their seasons
Football is officially back in Centre County.
The Mountain League on Sunday put together its plan for the 2020 football season, which means four of the county’s five schools now have a level of certainty for the fall.
The league — which includes Bald Eagle Area, Bellefonte, Penns Valley and Philipsburg-Osceola — will begin its season Sept. 11 with practices beginning Monday in order for teams to meet the minimum three weeks of practice required by the PIAA before the start of competition.
Practice was set to begin Aug. 10, before Gov. Tom Wolf made the recommendation to put fall high school and youth sports on hold until Jan. 1. The PIAA paused practices for two weeks before ultimately deciding Friday to move forward with fall sports and left the decision on whether or not teams should play up to individual school districts.
The delay means most Mountain League schools will have to make slight alterations to their schedules. Any lost league games from the schools’ original schedules will be moved to the weekend of Oct. 23 to ensure all seven schools in the league will face each other.
Penns Valley will move its game against Huntingdon, originally scheduled for Week 1, to that weekend to complete its league schedule. The Rams still have an opening on Oct. 30 that they are actively seeking to fill.
While Penns Valley has its schedule completed — for the most part — other schools have yet to have theirs finalized but are hoping to have them completed within the week.
The county’s fifth high school football team, State College, may begin practice Sept. 4 with a scheduled opening game on Sept. 25 in accordance with a decision made by the Mid Penn Conference.
