What was once rare might become a little more commonplace. 

Despite the proximity of Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas high schools, games between the schools have been few and far over the last couple decades. 

The major hurdle for years was that the reclassification years of each state’s athletic association, the University Interscholastic League in Texas, and the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, didn’t line up. That left only the possibility of one-off games such as when Merryville played Evadale, Texas, in 2021, or Sulphur’s game against St. Pius X (Houston) in 2008. 

In the last 20 years, Southwest Louisiana schools have played Texas schools seven times. A good side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic was the LHSAA delayed reclassification one year, which allowed the states to get on the same clock. 

There will be four interstate games this season, the most in more than two decades. All of them are home-and-home series. 

The first of the games is today when Iowa makes the 50-mile journey to play Little Cypress-Mauriceville just north of Orange, Texas. 

 Iowa head coach Tommy Johns said it is the first time he has coached or played against a Texas school. In his days as a high school football player under his father Mike Johns at LaGrange in the late 1990s, he said they played a few schools from Mississippi. He is open to mixing in more out-of-state games in the future.

“I think it’s kind of a no-brainer,” Johns said. “You step over and play somebody different for once. I think it’s great. I think it’s great for both areas, and it’s something that’s new. It really hadn’t been done very much before, so we’re excited.”

Next week, St. Louis Catholic will travel to Orangefield, Texas, on Sept. 20. The Saints lost to Vidor, Texas, in 2022 and ’23.

“Well, from our perspective, it’s hard to find opponents of similar size that aren’t in our district,” said St. Louis head coach Dustin Nothnagel. “We know good ball’s played over there, so it’s worth trying to make the call to schedule a school from Texas.

“I don’t know if it’ll be a trend moving forward or not, but I’d like to see it just to kind of grow the coaching community and to get people to communicate across state lines. I think it’s a great thing to support football.”

For DeRidder and Merryville, being able to schedule Texas schools is a boon. Because they are not in a metropolitan area, finding non-district opponents less than two hours away can be difficult. Last week, the Panthers drove two hours to North Central High School. They will travel an hour to Hemphill, Texas, on Oct. 4.

“Their head coach had left and they were trying to get a schedule in place while they were trying to hire a new head coach,” Merryville head coach Bart Coody explained. “So they reached out to me and I was in a bind for a game as well, so it kind of just worked out. I don’t have a problem with playing Texas schools.

“For us to find games that aren’t two and three hours away is really hard, so it was kind of a thing where they weren’t far away and they were in a bind and I was in a bind, so we could kind of both help each other out.”

DeRidder will host Newton, Texas, on Sept. 20, a 40-minute drive for the Eagles.

“I had talked to the coach at Newton a couple of years back trying to match up dates and we never could match them up,” DeRidder head coach Brad Parmley said. “This year just worked out.

“Scheduling is always kind of hard for us because we are not in a metropolitan city. We try to find quality ball games around here. Some of the smaller schools won’t play us, so my options are kind of limited early on. This year the schedules matched up for us and Newton to be able to play.”