New plans formed for football district game following tragic events Posted On: Friday, Nov. 6 2009 11:04 AM By Angel Verdejo
Killeen Daily Herald

The Copperas Cove and Harker Heights football teams will play their regular-season finale at 7:30 tonight at Cove's Bulldawg Stadium.

The District 12-5A finale for both schools was originally scheduled for Thursday night at Leo Buckley Stadium, but the game was one of many area sporting events either canceled or postponed in reaction to the shootings at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 27 wounded as of Friday morning.

The District Executive committee met by conference call this morning and voted to have the game played in Cove, according to the Killeen Independent School District
Athletic Director Tom Rogers.

"They polled each other on the phone and everybody voted unanimously for Heights to play in Cove tonight," Rogers said. The four District 12-5A playoff teams are already set, with Cove (7-2, 4-2) and Belton (8-1, 5-1) both heading to the Class 5A Division II playoff bracket and A&M Consolidated (6-3, 5-1) and Bryan (5-4, 4-2) both going to the Division I bracket.

The district seedings aren't final yet, a big reason Cove and Harker Heights will play. If Belton and Cove both win tonight, the Tigers will be the 12-5A top seed (winner) in the Division II playoffs and face the 11-5A bottom seed (runner-up).

Cove would then be the 12-5A runner-up and face the top seed from 11-5A, which only has three teams already qualified for the playoffs (DeSoto, Tyler Lee and Tyler John Tyler). The fourth team will be Mesquite, North Mesquite or Mesquite Horn, with each prompting a different set of teams heading to each playoff bracket.

"There's a lot of implications that can come down if we don't play it," Rogers said. "Not really anything for Harker Heights, but more for Copperas Cove. Everything is possible but the best thing to do was for everybody to play their games. "That way everything is done based on wins and losses and all that."

Harker Heights season tickets will be honored tonight, Rogers said, but as general admission seats instead of the reserved seats they are usually at Leo Buckley Stadium. Cove will be the designated home team on the scoreboard, while the Bulldawgs will wear their dark, home uniforms and their fans will seat on the home side (west-side seats) at Bulldawg Stadium.

The 24-hour turnaround to play in Cove is very short in terms of preparing for a football game, but "yesterday that was all tossed around so people could wrap their heads around that," Rogers said.

Pushing the game to Saturday was also proposed, as well as waiting until the other three district games were played to even see if Cove and Harker Heights needed to play at all. Playing Saturday wasn't a viable option, as Cove would lose a day in preparing for its opening-round playoff game next week. "When we discussed it,
everybody's consensus was we needed to play the game," Rogers said. "We needed to play today and everything will be played out like it's supposed to be other than the fact that Heights will be over there."

Contact Angel Verdejo at averdejo@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7564.