It was a football battle no one wanted to decide on.

Lawrence High School and Free State High School are having their homecoming games on the same night forcing people with allegiances to both schools to choose which game to attend.

Pre-game stories: Firebirds: No excuses Injuries slowing Lions

“I was surprised to find out they are on the same night,” said Lawrence resident Ruth Wyatt. She has grandchildren at both high schools and they are involved in homecoming. But Wyatt said she was going to the Free State game because her granddaughter, Megan Wyatt, was a homecoming queen candidate.

“But I would have liked to have gone to both,” Wyatt said. “Nobody even knows that both are going on the same night unless you had ties to both. But, you know, some people graduated from Lawrence High and have children at Free State.”

And people won’t just have to decide which game to go to. Both schools are having their homecoming parades this afternoon. Lawrence High’s parade begins at 2:30 p.m. and will begin at the intersection of South Park and Massachussetts Street. Free State’s parade will begin at 2:40 p.m. and start at 15th and Wakarusa Drive.

The coincidental timing of the events is unfortunate, said Lawrence High School principal Steve Nilhas. But he said he hasn’t heard any complaints.

“But I know some people have questioned why it was done this way,” he said.

Free State principal Joe Snyder and Nilhas said they didn’t want homecoming on the same night. But because of league scheduling demands, there was no way around it.

“It’s not something we would prefer to do, but it’s what we had to do this year,” said Nilhas.

Nilhas and Snyder said the Sunflower League creates the football schedule. Based on that, school officials have to find a date that works for homecoming. They said it has to be a home game and preferably before or early in October because the weather starts getting cooler, they said.