Jefferson City High School and Helias Catholic High School will play each other tonight in football for the first time.
While there's historically been a rivalry between the two Jefferson City schools, they weren't in the same division or conference to compete until now. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at JCHS' Adkins Stadium.
JCHS will follow all of its COVID-19 activities policies at the game, which requires spectators to wear masks and limits the number of people allowed in the stadium.
Capacity is limited to 50 percent, which is approximately 3,000 people.
JC Schools Superintendent Larry Linthacum said he expects all 3,000 of those seats to be filled.
"We appreciate the patience of our fans and community and share in the excitement for this historic matchup," Linthacum said.
Every other row in the stadium will be blocked off, and each section will be split to allow for social distancing. Helias is bringing portable bleachers to the stadium to better accommodate additional fans while ensuring social distancing, Linthacum said.
To limit attendance at games, Helias and JC Schools use player-card systems where each student, coach or staff member on the Missouri State High School Activities Association roster gets cards to give to people to attend the game. The number of cards allowed can change from game to game and depends on county health guidelines and how many people are allowed in the facility for the event.
For this game, there are 2,000 cards allotted for JCHS and 1,000 allotted for Helias.
JCHS football, band, cheer and dance students can use cards No. 1-8 at this game, and Helias football and cheer students can use cards No. 1-5. This is consistent with the allotment for home and visitor teams that was determined by the Central Missouri Activities Conference before the season started, Linthacum said.
Since Adkins Stadium is bigger than Helias' Ray Hentges Stadium, Helias students will have more player cards than they would have had if the game were held at Helias' stadium - where the capacity would have been 900 people: 700 for Helias and 200 for JCHS.
"We believe that because the seating capacity is so high for that stadium that we can still get a good number of fans from both teams in to watch the game," Communications Director Ryan Burns said.
Burns said she does not expect any issues such as people standing outside the gates to watch the game but noted this would be up to the school resource officers to handle, and SROs are always present at games.
"I feel like the community has a pretty good sense of the procedures that we've put in place for the games," Burns said.
To view a livestream of the game, visit the JCHS Athletics YouTube page.