Dellapina told the story of how the game came about on Wednesday morning.
“About two weeks ago, right after our second scrimmage, I was contacted by the AD (Harold Barker) at De Smet,” Dellapina said, “and he said, ‘One of our parents is friends with one of your coaches, and he said that you guys were open on the 26th, 27th,’ which is actually Week 1 for Missouri. He asked if we would be interested.”
Dellapina talked to coach Maurice Douglass, who decided he wanted to keep Week 2 open so the Wildcats would have a week off after playing Saint Ignatius and could get ready for the eight games ahead on the schedule.
Then Springfield couldn’t play on Saturday in Parma. Steady lightning kept delaying the start of the game against Saint Ignatius. Officials from both schools decided they would cancel the game if there were any more lightning strikes after 9:15 p.m. There were.
Springfield went home thinking it wouldn’t get to play until Week 3 on Sept. 2 against Trotwood-Madison. Dellapina, meanwhile, reached out again to Barker on Saturday to find out if they had found a game for the week ahead. De Smet was supposed to play TDW Academy on Friday, but TDW dropped De Smet Jesuit from its schedule, according to a report by STLToday.com.
Barker told Dellapina they didn’t have a game and would play Springfield but would need Springfield to travel to its field in St. Louis to play. Dellapina told Barker he didn’t have the travel budget to make that work. The Wildcats had already traveled to scrimmages in Louisville, Ky., and Cleveland. Plus, at that point, De Smet wanted to play on Friday, so the players would have missed two days of school (Thursday and Friday) traveling to the game.
Barker then contacted Dellapina again and said De Smet could play on Saturday after all. Dellapina said that didn’t help much because the travel costs were still too high.
Then Barker sent a text message to Dellapina saying Brebeuf Jesuit was willing to host the game in Indianapolis. Dellpina misunderstood the message at first, thinking De Smet had scheduled a game against Brebeuf, but they quickly ironed out what Barker was offering.
De Smet and Brebeuf are both Jesuit schools. That was one reason the Indianapolis school was willing to help.
“They’ve got a JV game in the morning,” Dellapina said. “They’ve got a soccer game in the afternoon. But (Barker) said they would be willing to host. Then we were just waiting on the logistics, tracking down officials and so forth. A 2-hour, 15-minute drive straight across I-70 is a heck of a lot more appealing. I talked to my bosses, and we said let’s make it happen. All the pieces fell into place.”
De Smet Jesuit ranked sixth among Missouri teams in the MaxPreps.com preseason top 25. It finished 7-3 last season and lost in the district semifinals after reaching the state championship game the previous two seasons. It won the state championship in 2019 in Missouri’s large school division, finishing 14-0.
De Smet’s roster includes senior cornerback Christian Gray, a Notre Dame recruit who ranks 55th in the class of 2023, according to Rivals.com. Tight end Mac Markway, an LSU recruit, ranks 157th. The head coach, John Merritt, was hired in April. He had coached at John Burroughs School since 2013 and led that program to a state championship in 2015.
“They’re certainly a tough quality opponent with some great players and have had quite a bit of success themselves,” Dellapina said. “We’re just happy to have a really good game to kick things off, and our kids are excited.”
Dellapina does not want to make playing out-of-state schools a habit. He would rather play teams from Ohio. Scheduling has become more challenging, however.
Springfield needed a Week 2 opponent this year because its series against Fairfield ended. Springfield and Fairfield had committed to playing the last four seasons in Week 2, though the last two games of that agreement got cancelled because of COVID-19 reasons. Then last season, the Greater Miami Conference moved from an eight-game league schedule to nine games. That left only one open date for a non-conference game.
“That really hurts a lot of schools, especially in our league, when it comes to scheduling,” Dellapina said Wednesday, “because two of the bigger Cincinnati conferences, the GMC and the ECC (Eastern Cincinnati Conference), have gone to nine-game schedules. It just makes it that much harder to find a non-league opponent. We’re already talking about continuing our relationship with Ignatius for the simple fact that both of us are struggling to find willing opponents.”
Each team in the eight-team Greater Western Ohio Conference plays seven conference games and needs to find three non-conference games.
“With the expansion of the playoffs,” Dellapina said, “everybody thought, on paper, this is going to make it easier to schedule. With more teams getting in, they won’t be so concerned with the records early on and so forth. But at the same time, there are certain Division I schools that still nobody wants to play. Everybody is trying to get wins. We’re going to continue to work on it and try to find people that are willing to play. I think people understand you get better by playing quality competition.”
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