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<p>LEWISBURG &#8212; Game on.</p><p>Or in this case, game back on.</p><p>The Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference voted Monday to allow league members Southern Columbia and Shikellamy to opt out of their scheduled high school football meeting this Friday &#8212; clearing the way for Southern to instead meet Wyoming Area in a mega-matchup while Shikellamy plays Holy Redeemer.</p><p>Those games will now go on at 7 p.m. Friday as previously planned, with Wyoming Area hosting Southern Columbia in a battle of unbeatens and Holy Redeemer playing Shikellamy at Berwick&#8217;s Crispin Field.</p><p>&#8220;We would not have had a game of this magnitude at our stadium for the next 30 years,&#8221; Wyoming Area coach Randy Spencer said. &#8220;Some people never get an opportunity to play in that situation, in front of that kind of crowd. We&#8217;re blessed.&#8221;</p><p>The idea was nearly cursed.</p><p>All four teams involved agreed to the switch three weeks ago, with the PIAA&#8217;s District 2 and District 4 officials along with the Wyoming Valley Conference giving their blessing for the change.</p><p>Wyoming Area pre-sold 2,500 tickets for the monster meeting with Southern Columbia within hours after the game was announced, as the school&#8217;s business community began offering such necessities as extra lighting, parking and security, while extra concessions were ordered for what promises to be an overflow crowd.</p><p>The holdup came when the Heartland Conference turned down Southern Columbia&#8217;s request for the new setup.</p><p>&#8220;It got put on social media before we were able to get to the league,&#8221; said Southern Columbia principal Jim Becker, who is also the president of the Heartland Conference. &#8220;There were (Heartland) people who had issues with it, I understand their point.&#8221;</p><p>But Shikellamy filed its own formal request with the Heartland Conference to make the game change, and the conference&#8217;s board members &#8212; comprised mostly of District 4 school principals and athletic directors &#8212; voted approval in a closed meeting Monday at Lewisburg High School.</p><p>It was hardly unanimous.</p><p>&#8220;There was some resistance to it,&#8221; said Becker, who couldn&#8217;t give an accurate count of the vote. &#8220;We&#8217;re just glad the PHAC responded and decided to allowed us to have this. It&#8217;s great for the communities, great for the players. Shikellamy will benefit from playing Holy Redeemer.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll benefit from playing Wyoming Area.&#8221;</p><p>The biggest benefit may be for the competitors.</p><p>Southern Columbia and Wyoming Area are both 7-0, and will now head into a clash that features two of the top teams in their respective District 2 classes &#8212; along with some of the top players in the country.</p><p>Wyoming Area is ranked No. 4 among PIAA Class 3A teams and riding a 17-game Wyoming Valley Conference winning streak over the last two seasons. Southern Columbia, a nine-time PIAA champion and two-time defending Class 2A state champ, boasts Ohio State-bound Julian Fleming as the nation&#8217;s No. 3 college recruit, along with three teammates bound for the Big Ten next year in PIAA career touchdown leader Gaige Garcia (Michigan), Cal Haladay (Michigan State) and Preston Zachman (Wisconsin).</p><p>All of those Division I college recruits play linebacker except Fleming, a big-time wide receiver who also plays defensive back on a unit that shut out its first five foes.</p><p>On offense, Zachman is Southern Columbia&#8217;s quarterback and Garcia is a running back in an explosive offense that has out-scored its seven opponents by a combined 416-20 and reached at least 56 points in each of the past five weeks. Southern Columbia&#8217;s closest games were the first two &#8212; a 36-0 victory at two-time defending South Carolina state champion Hammond, followed by a 48-0 clipping of Mount Carmel.</p><p>&#8220;It should be a very interesting game,&#8221; said Southern Columbia coach Jim Roth, also the school&#8217;s athletic director who set the whole switch in motion by getting the three other schools involved to agree to the scheduling change.</p><p>&#8220;This situation translates as a good piece of exposure for the players in respect to the playoffs,&#8221; Roth continued. &#8220;We&#8217;ve never played them, there&#8217;s no history, so we don&#8217;t know a lot about them. It&#8217;s always a little more interesting to play the unknown, like when we went to Hammond. Without the long trip, this is similar to that (Hammond game) in a way.</p><p>&#8220;It feels more like a playoff game.&#8221;</p><p>Meanwhile, Holy Redeemer and Shikellamy will play each other in a game both believe they may have a chance to win.</p><p>That wasn&#8217;t likely to be the case if the original schedules stuck, as a Holy Redeemer team that&#8217;s been winless since the 2017 regular-season finale was set to face a Wyoming Area team that hasn&#8217;t lost in two WVC seasons, while Shikellamy (1-6) was facing an almost impossible task against Southern.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re happy it got granted here,&#8221; Roth said of the switch. &#8220;We were happy to have the vote we got for all the schools involved.&#8221;</p><p>Holy Redeemer and Shikellamy are playing at Crispin Field because it&#8217;s a midway point between the two schools.</p><p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s the best for everybody, all four programs involved,&#8221; Redeemer athletic director JP Aquilina said.</p><p>Tickets for the Southern Columbia-Wyoming Area game will be on sale from 10 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 2 p.m. daily at the Wyoming Area Secondary Center (the high school) for as long as they last.</p><p>That may not be for long.</p><p>&#8220;Yeah, everybody&#8217;s excited,&#8221; said Wyoming Area athletic director Jim Pizano, who is also an assistant football coach at the school. &#8220;I know people reaching out to me, asking about where they can buy tickets who I haven&#8217;t talked to in 15 or 20 years. I&#8217;m fired up.</p><p>&#8220;I think this is the best thing that has happened to our program in 20 years.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Wyoming Area running back Darren Rodney and the rest of the Warriors can now look forward to hosting a monster battle with fellow unbeaten and nine-time state champ Southern Columbia on Friday, after the Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference voted to allow Southern Columbia to switch its scheduled game with Shikellamy during a vote of conference administrators Monday at Lewisburg High School. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_TTL092819HSF-WA-Lehman_3-1-.jpg</photo0><caption0>Wyoming Area running back Darren Rodney and the rest of the Warriors can now look forward to hosting a monster battle with fellow unbeaten and nine-time state champ Southern Columbia on Friday, after the Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference voted to allow Southern Columbia to switch its scheduled game with Shikellamy during a vote of conference administrators Monday at Lewisburg High School. </caption0><photoCredit0>Bill Tarutis File Photo | For Times Leader </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Heartland Conference votes to allow Southern Columbia to play Wyoming Area</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Paul Sokoloski</p><p>psokoloski@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div>

Heartland Conference vote allows Southern Columbia to play Wyoming Area