No stats will be kept, the players and coaches don’t necessarily care about winning and losing, and the scoreboard might not even be turned on.

Even so, Friday’s football matchup between Porters Chapel Academy and St. Aloysius is one that’s been decades in the making.

Warren County’s two Mississippi Association of Independent Schools members will play each other for the first time when they get together for a preseason jamboree at St. Al’s Balzli Field. It’s a game fans and players on both sides have often speculated about but never seen until now.

“I think every kid that’s played football at Porters Chapel and St. Al has wanted to have a crosstown rivalry like Warren Central and Vicksburg,” said first-year PCA coach Blake Purvis, who is also a graduate of the school. “It’s unique in my first season that we get that opportunity.”

PCA and St. Al are close to each other both in geography and the size of the student body. They were in different associations until last summer, however, when St. Al left the Mississippi High School Activities Association to join the MAIS.

Although they’ve played each other in sports that have more playing dates, like basketball and baseball, the limited number of football games and different competitive agendas never led to anything more than idle chatter about a game on the gridiron.

That changed when St. Al joined the MAIS in July 2015, and its objectives became a bit more aligned with PCA’s. After both teams traveled to Clinton last year to play other teams in a jamboree, St. Al coach BJ Smithhart decided to see if there was a better solution for both of them.

“In the last several years, both schools have gone to Jackson. He and I talked and said, ‘Why are both of us traveling when we can do it here and save the travel?” Purvis said. “I know St. Al is going to give us a good a gauge of where we are as anybody, so it’s a good game for us.”

St. Al and PCA will not play each other in the regular season. The MAIS sets its schedules two years at a time, and this is year two of the current cycle. Both coaches, though, figure they’ll become fixtures on each other’s schedules beginning in 2017.

MAIS scheduling usually tries to group opponents that are close together geographically. Few pairings are as close as the two miles or so separating PCA and St. Al.

“They do the scheduling for you. We just figure they can make us play each other,” Smithhart said.

Purvis said he was excited to finally see a matchup he’s been looking forward to for a long time.

“I feel it’s going to become a yearly thing. The tradition of the MAIS is keeping teams close to home,” he said. “It’s a good icebreaker for that, and a good opportunity for both schools. It’s something people in Vicksburg have wanted to see for a long time.”

As for the football itself, it’s also something both teams need. Neither played a scrimmage last week. St. Al traveled to Brookhaven Academy, only for the game to get canceled during warm-ups because of lightning. PCA canceled its scrimmage with Canton Academy after four of its players were badly injured in a car wreck the week before.

“I really would have liked to have played it. It would’ve been a good gauge for this jamboree,” Smithhart said, before noting that St. Al wasn’t allowed to play a scrimmage during its MHSAA days and didn’t have time to line up an opponent last year. “It’s what we normally do, though, so I don’t know if it set us back any.”

The jamboree is more important for PCA to finally see where it stands and make the necessary tweaks before next week’s season opener against St. Andrew’s.

All four players injured in the wreck — Leon Simms, Brandon Brister, Robi Riggin and Michael Brewer — were starters and are likely out for the season. A fifth starter, Cole Pittman, was injured in an ATV wreck in a separate incident and is also out for the year.

“When we sat down and looked at it, we lost five two-way starters in two weeks,” Purvis said. “It’s hard for anybody to replace five starters two weeks before the first game.”

Purvis said his remaining players have had a can-do attitude while shuffling around to fill the gaps. A deep ninth- and 10th-grade class and an emphasis on building depth over the summer also helped make a potentially catastrophic situation feel manageable.

“The guys we have had to move around have adjusted well. It set us back a little bit, but we’re getting there,” Purvis said. “We had an opportunity to rep a lot of guys for depth purposes, and that’s where we started filling the holes.”

JAMBOREE SCHEDULE

Friday

4:30 p.m. – Warren Central vs. Ridgeland, at Germantown

6 p.m. – Porters Chapel at St. Aloysius

7:30 p.m. – Vicksburg vs. Yazoo City (JV), at Port Gibson

8:30 p.m. – Vicksburg at Port Gibson (varsity)