According to the Elmhurst athletics page, the host Blujays will face off against the Ripon Redhawks on the first night of the Bluejay Classic Tournament (Friday, December 28). That means Calvin will be matched up with fellow a Great Lakes Region member: the Wabash Little Giants.
Ripon and Elmhurst both count as out-of-region for the Knights, so it's cool to see the Calvin get the one possible in-region game as a guarantee. This brings their in-region total to 18 games, with a possibility of adding North Park (in the Calvin Tip-Off Tournament) as well as up to two MIAA tournament games. I'm just working off the top of my head here, but I don't recall Calvin having more than 19 in-region games in any recent year (and that's including three MIAA tournament games).
19 feels like a good target for the upcoming years. Division III is soon going to require teams to play 75% of their schedule against in-region D3 competition. In a 25-game schedule that number works out to be 18.75 games. I don't know if they'll round or truncate the decimal, but a target of 19 would be safe (and reasonable). Of course, it's unreasonable that games against Wheaton and Elmhurst would all be out-of-region, but I've already ranted on that too many times to begin again right now.
Of course, Hope reportedly has a game against Covenant (Lookout Mountain, GA) which would be counted as in-region due to Georgia and Michigan being in NCAA Administrative Region #3. Michigan schools can't play in-region games against most Chicagoland teams (200-220 miles) because "think of the students", but we'll just declare Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Puerto Rico to be fine. Silver lining: there are talks of impending regional realignment.
So, yeah. regional games are good, and Calvin will have one against Wabash. I wasn't really planning on trying to make it to Elmhurst on Friday afternoon, but I guess plans change.
Want to stay up to date on the happenings at FFTMAG? Follow me on Twitter, “like” us on Facebook, and grab our RSS Feed.
