Free State’s Camren Torneden (1) tries to break a tackle against Olathe East in this Sept. 4 file photo in Olathe. O-East won the regular-season battle, 29-20. The Firebirds and Hawks will meet in the playoffs tonight at Free State.

Throughout the years, the Free State High football team has become accustomed to altering its schedule in order to play games on Thursday nights.

But Saturdays?

“Friday is meant for high school football and Saturday is meant for college football,” FSHS coach Bob Lisher said. “That’s probably where a lot of people’s minds will be (today) and the challenge for us is to make sure we’re ready to go.”

Today’s game — against Shawnee Mission West at noon at SM South District Stadium — was moved from Friday on the original schedule because of two main issues. The first was that all of the Shawnee Mission schools play home games this week, meaning that both district stadiums were full on Friday night. Under normal conditions, such a predicament would have moved the game to Thursday night. But because SM West had parent-teacher conferences scheduled for Thursday, they asked to move the game to today.

That’s not all bad.

“The extra day gets us even more ready to go,” senior Haedyn Cole said. “I’m not sure we prefer to play on Saturday. It’s not the same as playing under the lights, but we’re going to do everything the same to try to prepare us for the game. We’ll still have a team breakfast Saturday morning, just like we do on Fridays.”

According to Lisher, having eight days between games instead of seven shouldn’t be much of a problem, as the Firebirds have shown this week in practice that they’re more than ready to take on the Vikings in what many feel is Free State’s biggest test to date.

“I think the kids will be focused on beating SM West,” Lisher said. “They got us last year in the opener. Tim Callaghan’s a great coach and he always has his teams well prepared. Athlete for athlete, I think we match up pretty evenly, it will just come to down who executes better.”

Free State (2-1) might have a slight edge in that department. The Firebirds have been nearly flawless since opening the season with a mistake-filled loss at Olathe East.

In Week 2, Free State turned back SM East, 36-3, with a potent ground game. Last week, FSHS went to the air to score 49 unanswered points in a 56-14 blowout of SM North.

“This week, we just want to continue to improve on what we’ve done the last couple of weeks,” Lisher said.

The Vikings (3-0) have been equally impressive in the early going, knocking off Olathe South, Olathe East and Leavenworth by the combined score of 95-37.

In addition to running the traditional, one- and two-back balanced offense they’re known for, the Vikings feature a new-look defense, which incorporates three down linemen and three linebackers. The new 3-3 defensive set has popped up at stadiums throughout the state but it’s nothing new to Free State, which switched to the more versatile defense prior to the 2006 season.

“For the first two weeks of the season, that’s the defense we practiced against,” Cole said. “We definitely know how to block that on offense and what to look for in order to attack it.”