Aberdeen Roncalli won’t have to travel very far for its final regular-season road football game at 7 p.m. this evening.

The Cavaliers were scheduled to be in Mobridge to face the Mobridge-Pollock Tigers, but instead the contest ended up being moved to Dacotah Bank Stadium on the campus of Northern State.

“A couple of week ago, Mobridge’s AD Troy Stenberg called me and said they are unable to play their football game at Mobridge because they’re putting in a new track,” said Roncalli athletic director Derek Larson. “They deemed it kind of unsafe to play there.”

Mobridge reached out to another school to see if playing the game there would be an option. It appeared that would have worked before the area received three inches of rain, not including Wednesday’s precipitation.

Larson then asked Stenberg about the possibility of playing at Northern.

“I said what are your thoughts if we could make Northern work? He said that sounds like a plan,” Larson said.

Soon the contest had been moved to the Hub City, although it is not a Roncalli home game.

“This is a road for game us. I know it’s in Aberdeen, but we’ll be still wearing the whites away (uniforms), we’ll still be the visiting team on the scoreboard,” Larson said. “It just worked out that it’s in Aberdeen and Northern is gracious enough to host us.”

The contest marks the second high school football game to be played at the new stadium. Ipswich and Herreid-Selby Area played there late last month.

Larson said there were a couple of variables that led to the selection of Northern over Swisher Field where the Cavaliers normally play.

“We’ve never played at Northern’s stadium. It’s like they could say, we’ll we’re playing a road game at our home field. That doesn’t really fit,” Larson said. “This is definitely a neutral site. No one (on either team) has ever played there. I would imagine most of (the players on) both teams have never even set foot on the field.”

Interestingly enough, the contest is one of just a couple of football games in the area this evening.

Larson said the game was scheduled for a Thursday prior to the start of the season, due to a recommendation from the South Dakota High School Activities Association to play one contest on either a Thursday or a Saturday because of a shortage of officials.

It just so happened that tonight’s contest was able to find a landing spot at the state’s newest state-of-the-art facility.

“To be honest, I think it’s just really a win-win,” Larson said of both teams invovled. “I know that Mobridge has to travel, but they’re getting to play in one of the nicest facilities in the entire state.”