Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Dates for 2017 Southeast football season and Homecoming announced

Thursday, February 23, 2017
Junior quarterback Jesse Hosket passes the ball to senior running back Tremaine McCullough during last year's Pink Up game. The date for next year's game has not been decided.
Photo by Stone Selsor

Southeast Missouri State University's Department of Athletics released its football team's 2017 schedule, including the homecoming game on Oct. 14 against Tennessee Tech.

The Ohio Valley Conference determines the conference-play schedules for all of the teams within the OVC, and from those home dates, the Department of Athletics, as well as the university administration and president, determine which date is most suitable for events such as homecoming, Family Weekend and Pink Up.

There are many factors for them to consider, including events around Cape Girardeau. Last season's Oct. 29 game against Austin Peay was the preferred game for homecoming, but that date ran into conflicts around the community.

"We also have to take into consideration other events that are taking place around campus," Director of Athletics Brady Barke said. "Last year, for example, we were forced to move into November because of some other conflicts, one of them being the state volleyball tournament that takes place at the Show Me Center, which affected hotel availability and facility availability for some of the other events."

While Oct. 1 also was a consideration last season, that date is slightly earlier in the season than when homecoming typically is celebrated, and Barke said the first month of the season is normally reserved for Family Weekend. Family Weekend this season will be on Sept. 30, when the Redhawks play Eastern Kentucky.

"We don't want family weekend to be right after families had just finished dropping off their students to college," Barke said. "So we want them to be a little bit removed from that before the families are coming back to visit, and then homecoming, of course, we'd like to have as close to the middle of October as we can because the weather starts to get a little less predictable as we get further into the season, and so we're pretty close to the dates we generally like to have in terms of mid-to-late September for Family Weekend, and then mid-October for homecoming."

Early in the season, Southeast will play regional rival Southern Illinois-Carbondale on Sept. 16, a game that typically brings fans from across the river. With the added popularity and fanfare of being the home opener, it didn't make sense for that game to be Family Weekend.

“I think that game tends to be a really popular game for fans and draws pretty well for us,” Barke said. “I think just looking at the schedule as a whole it made more sense for us to look at the second weekend as opposed to the home opener and SIU and Family Weekend all cramped into the same game.”

While Southeast did not announce a date for the annual Pink Up game, Barke would like to see events like that continue to be a fixture in the Redhawks’ schedule.

“It serves a number of purposes, certainly fan interest and attendance is a big one, but things like Pink Up have been great community-engagement activities and we’d love to continue to do those types of events,” Barke said.

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