The idea sure sounded good.
Fierce rivals on the basketball court whose football programs just made runs to the Missouri and Kansas big-class title games. Who wouldn’t want to watch Rockhurst and SM East face off on the gridiron — especially if the game were to be held at Sporting Park, home of Sporting KC?
Alas, a tweet from Sporting KC CEO Robb Heineman last week suggesting he was working on bringing a Hawklets vs. Lancers match to “Blue Hell” proved a bit premature.
Heineman sent out the Tweet last Wednesday night…:
Working on rockhurst v east at sporting park… football
— Robb Heineman (@RobbHeineman) February 5, 2015
…prompting a slew of retweeting and favoriting.
But SM East football staff and a Sporting KC spokesman say no formal plans are in the works.
“He was out with some Rockhurst alumni and they got to talking about the idea,” says Sporting KC’s Rob Thomson. “It was more of a hypothetical.”
SM East head football coach Dustin Delaney, who tweeted back to Heineman that the Lancers would “love to” face Rock at Sporting Park said his staff has had no contact with the club about the idea.
“There are no plans,” Delaney said. “That was the Sporting CEO coming out of left field. Wish we could.”
Though SM East has control over scheduling its first game of the year, it’s already locked in to face Gardner-Edgerton at home to open the season this fall as part of a home-and-away agreement hatched last year.
And while Delaney says the idea of playing Rockhurst is especially appealing to him, the scheduling differences in the Kansas and Missouri high school calendars makes the logistics tricky.
“It’s almost impossible to get a week open to play Rock,” he said. “Our only open week is [week one]. That’s Rock’s week three. Puts us at huge disadvantage.”
Still, Thomson said the prospect of bringing the rivals together in KCK was theoretically possible.
“It would be hard to pull off. It would be a lot of fun, but we have a very busy slate of things going on at the park,” he said. “But you never know. We’ve seen that our surface can handle football without any damage.”
