This Friday marks the start of August. August means heat, sticky humidity, and high school football camps and practice. Friday will also be only four weeks away from the start of the high school football season (and college football, too!).
On August 29 Xavier goes on the road to West Des Moines to take on defending state 4A champion Dowling. It will be a rematch of last year's championship game, which Xavier lost rather convincingly 44-13. It will also be the westernmost football game ever played by the Saints ... they've never been west of Cedar Falls in their entire 17-year history (thanks, Spencer!).
Every Saints football game since 1998 has been carried by KMRY radio in Cedar Rapids, with yours truly providing the play-by-play since 2010 (Well, actually, there was one game that didn't make it to air due to an equipment fiasco, but we don't talk about that. Even if it was the 2012 state championship. But I digress). In recent years, the early-season Saints games were often tape-delayed, as KMRY carries the Cedar Rapids Kernels minor-league baseball games. The Midwest League regular season overlaps with the start of high school football, and the league playoffs can conflict up to the third week or so. Naturally, I have been prepping for the Xavier-Dowling game to be broadcast following Kernels baseball on August 29.
But! News may be leaking from staff at KMRY. I have heard a rumor that the station may decide to carry the Kernels game that night only on their internet stream - and carry Xavier football live.
Now, I did discover that KMRY had chosen to do that with Kernels weekday afternoon games this year: all the night games and weekend day games were broadcast on the air, but the once-a-month-or-so weekday day games were streamed online only, with normal KMRY programming over the air. So it sounds like they might do that same thing with the Kernels vs. Xavier-Dowling.
This is pretty big news for me, so I'm excited! On the other hand, it does put the pressure on for me to hit it right out of the box.
Xavier's second game, on Thursday September 4 against Davenport Assumption, does conflict with the Midwest League playoffs, so if the Kernels make the playoffs there might be another decision to make there. However, that's the last baseball-football conflict on the schedule (Friday September 12 is an open date for the Midwest League championship series), so I know we'll be live for the Solon game and the rest of the season.
But week one, Dowling, live from West Des Moines? That would be an awesome surprise.
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