Frontier Conference schedules will look a little different in 2021-22

Scheduling was, admittedly, a bit of a nightmare for the Frontier Conference last school year. COVID-19 was the culprit.

Still, scheduling in a league that is ever-changing is also never easy, and so, with a new sports year about to dawn, fans of Montana State University-Northern and Frontier Conference athletics will notice more differences to league slates.

Football and volleyball will return to their rightful fall slot this year, with football also resuming full 10-game conference schedules. Meanwhile, volleyball will have a short turnaround as the league played a full spring schedule that lasted until April. During the spring season, all volleyball matches were played Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. This coming season, matches will be played on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, with some Saturday afternoon matches scheduled as well. Each team will play 14 conference matches, with a new twist to the season being the Frontier Conference Preseason Round Robin Tournament, which will make its debut Sept. 17-18 in the Armory Gymnasium.

The upcoming basketball season will see major changes to the schedule once again.

Even before the pandemic, changes were coming to Frontier hoops, since Lewis-Clark State left the league to rejoin the Cascade Collegiate Conference in 2020. With the Warriors gone, the league is back to a Montana-only Frontier for basketball and volleyball, and last season, each team played each other four times, with a 1990's style back-to-back home game schedule.

Moving forward, however, each team will only play each other three times for a 15-game conference schedule. All Frontier basketball games will be played Thursday nights with the women tipping off at 5 p.m. and the men at 7. The second game of the week will be Saturday afternoons, with the women tipping off at 2 p.m. and the men at 4 p.m. Last year, games were played Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons.

As for the postseason for volleyball and basketball, volleyball will return to a postseason tournament with this year's event taking place in Helena Nov. 12-13. Basketball will continue to have an on-campus playoff for the Frontier postseason.

Upcoming dates for Northern include football kicking off the season against College of Idaho Aug. 28 at 1 p.m. in Havre. Northern volleyball starts conference play Sept. 25 at home against Rocky Mountain College. The Frontier hoops season will once again plays its traditional December games, with Northern traveling to Carroll College Dec. 2 and hosting Providence Dec. 4. League play then resumes Jan. 6-8 with the Lights and Skylights traveling to Rocky Mountain College and Montana Western.