It's time to dust off game-day helmets and jerseys that have sat idly in locker rooms for the last 10 months.
Alaska prep football is back.
The season kicks off Friday on a night highlighted by a matchup in Soldotna between two reigning champions — large-school champ West and medium-school champ Soldotna. The Stars' 39-game winning streak is one of the best in the country.
Soldotna starting the season as the team to beat isn't anything new, but there are several changes heading into the 2016 season.
Among them are a new conference for Chugiak, new locations for the playoffs, the official opening of East's new stadium and a new varsity team — the Redington Huskies of Knik.
[A schedule of this weekend's games and the preseason polls]
[For Soldotna Stars football team, it's all in the details]
Chugiak to Railbelt Conference
Chugiak, last year's large-school state runner-up, is ditching the Cook Inlet Conference for the Railbelt Conference this season.
Mustangs coach Roger Spackman said the move made sense because it helps even out the two conferences. Last season, the CIC had seven teams to the Railbelt's four. Now, there are six CIC teams and five Railbelt teams.
Chugiak is also closer in enrollment to Railbelt teams Wasilla, Colony, Lathrop and West Valley.
"Numbers-wise, our school is much smaller than the rest of the Anchorage schools," Spackman said. "We're about 1,100 kids, compared to the Anchorage schools that have 1,700 or 1,800 up to 2,200."
Spackman said Chugiak will still regularly play nonconference games against CIC teams.
"This year we're playing three Anchorage teams to start out, which is good," he said. "We want that."
Spackman said despite longer road trips, costs aren't expected to be much higher. The team will add one additional overnight trip per year, he said. Because one Fairbanks team will travel to Chugiak every season, the Mustangs only need to travel to Fairbanks once a year.
Chugiak enters the Railbelt as the conference favorite. The Mustangs were the state runners-up last year and rank second to West in the Alaska Sports Broadcasting Network preseason poll.
"It's gonna be interesting to see how we do," Spackman said. "You'd hope that we can do great, but since it's gonna be all new to us, we're going in with our eyes wide open, that's for sure."
New locations for state tournaments
Thanks to stadium renovations, the large-school state semifinals and championship will return to Anchorage Football Stadium.
And for the first time, the small- and medium-school playoffs will be held in Palmer instead of Anchorage.
Last year, because AFS couldn't be used, the state semifinals and the championship game took place at West High, which caused controversy when higher-seeded East had to go to West to play the lower-seeded Eagles. West won the game 42-21.
"That caused issues with, 'We're the higher seed, why are we going there?' " said Billy Strickland, executive director of the Alaska School Activities Association.
Strickland said AFS was renovated last spring, allowing ASAA to move games back to a neutral field.
The renovations included tearing down and replacing the dated concession stand and locker rooms.
"(T)he primary reason we left AFS (was) particularly the locker room situation," Strickland said. "We just didn't feel (it) was the best situation for the students when we had other options.
"They fixed it, so we rate it back as being the better site."
Strickland said there are tradeoffs when deciding on a playoff location. He said the visitor bleachers at AFS are smaller than they are at many Anchorage high schools but the neutrality aspect, the parking and the updated locker rooms make AFS the best choice for 2016.
Meanwhile, Palmer was picked to host the rest of the playoffs, beating out bids from Dimond — which hosted the games the last two years — and Soldotna.
Strickland said he doesn't know of any instance when a state football championship game was played somewhere other than Anchorage.
"If it's not the first, it's the first in a gazillion years," he said.
Strickland said the move to Palmer made sense economically. Many of the potential participants are closer to Palmer than Anchorage or Soldotna and the school has hosted state events in other sports.
"There's a certain beauty in the logic to (it) being within the communities of schools that are involved," Strickland said. "Dimond was a great host to that event and did a great job, so it's by no means that anybody was unhappy with the job that Dimond or Dimond administration was doing.
"It was just an opportunity to kind of spread out the wealth a little bit."
East's new stadium is ready
The East Thunderbirds played two games in their new stadium late last season, but it didn't quite feel like home.
The stadium had no scoreboard, so they had to use a small, portable one.
"They're excited," East coach Jeff Trotter said of his players. "It's nice too 'cause I think when they (played on) it last year, it felt rushed.
"This year they see the scoreboard up — it got turned on the other day and it looked really good — the box is complete and everything is in."
The official opening is Saturday, Aug. 27, against Dimond.
Trotter said the game will include a dedication featuring Eugene Chang of Orthopedic Physicians Anchorage, who donated the scoreboard, as well as members of the East's championship teams from the 1980s.
Last season, the Thunderbirds played home games at Bartlett and West.
"We were the nomads last year," Trotter said.
East fans always traveled well to the "home" games, Trotter said, but it will be nice for everyone to have a permanent home right in their neighborhood.
He said an extended fence and more bleachers still need to be added to the visitor's side, but the stadium is good to go for all home games this season.
Redington starts varsity program
Redington, the Knik school that opened last year, will play varsity football this season after playing a junior varsity schedule last season.
The Huskies will play in the Peninsula Conference with Homer, Nikiski, Seward and Voznesenka.
They make their small-school varsity debut Friday against Monroe Catholic.