By DOUG DONNELLY

OTTAWA LAKE – Who’s ready for a road trip?

The Whiteford football team is preparing for a lot of road trips this fall as the schedule has the Bobcats on the road for six of their nine regular season games – and several of them are of the long-distance variety.

Whiteford coach Todd Thieken says first and foremost the Bobcats aren’t going to complain about it.

“We have adopted a policy amongst the coaches and kids that we will not complain about the trips in any way,” Thieken said. “We will approach it as we have to drive far away to get teams to play us.”

With the Tri-County Conference having just three remaining 11-player football teams, the Bobcats had to scramble to find opponents for this season. Former Whiteford Athletic Director Jeremy Simmons sent out an e-mail to hundreds of schools in Michigan and Ohio, mostly bigger schools, in search of opponents. He even talked about scheduling games with some athletic directors in Indiana.

“It was difficult,” Simmons said at the time. “I got back a lot of replies that said no thanks and a lot of schools just didn’t respond.”

The fact that the Bobcats have been ultra successful in recent years played a factor into not finding teams closer to play. Whiteford has been in the playoffs 12 consecutive seasons, played in four state championship games and won two state titles since 2016.

The Bobcats will open the season with a home game against Blissfield, the traditional rival that has led off the season for both schools for more than a decade.

After that comes the shortest bus trip of the year as the Bobcats head to Ida to play another Lenawee County Athletic Association school. After that, the first of five long road trips sees the Bobcats travel to Buchanan in the southwest part of the state, a one-way trip of 165 miles, followed by a game at Edon, Ohio, in Week 4. Edon is 75 miles away.

After back-to-back home games against TCC foes Summerfield and Erie Mason, the Bobcats have three more road trips – at Clarkston Everest Collegiate, at White Pigeon and at Lucas, Ohio. Lucas is 135 miles, White Pigeon 121 miles and Everest Collegiate is around 85 miles.

“We are going to enjoy the fact that we get to play football with a ‘play anybody’ attitude,” Thieken said.

There are, of course, drawbacks to having so few home games. It affects the school’s athletic budget as there are only three dates to take in gate revenue and the band boosters, who have traditionally sold concessions at home games to raise funds for its programs, has fewer dates in which to do so.

It’s not ideal, school officials, say, but that is the hand that has been dealt.

There are some adjustments to be made with the length of the trips, Thieken said. For example, the team will plan to leave early enough to accommodate plans to stop and eat.

“I will try to get to games earlier so kids have a time to unwind after such a long trip,” he said.

There might be some twists.

“I am going to figure out something with the trips to find ways for the kids to bond together more as a team,” he said.

Fortunately the high number of road trips is just a one year anomaly. Starting in 2025, Whiteford will compete a typical home-and-away deal with all members of the Lenawee County Athletic Association, meaning the standard five home games one season and four home games the next is likely to return.