Correspondent file photo / Michael G. Taylor Poland’s Chase Jones tries to break a tackle during the Bulldogs’ win against Girard in Poland on Oct. 11, 2024.

Since 2019, no team aside from South Range has won the Northeast 8 Conference. For most of that span, no team had even beaten South Range, as the Raiders compiled a nearly six-year, 42-game win streak against NE8 opponents.

However, 2025 has been a much different year for the league.

Not only has South Range’s win streak been snapped, the Raiders now have lost back-to-back conference games. And Poland and Girard, the teams responsible for that skid and the only two teams without a loss in league play, will face off tonight in what could prove to be the ultimate decider in this season’s NE8 title race.

“I think the kids understand what’s at stake here,” Poland head coach Tom Pavlansky said. “But most of all, they understand the opponent that we’re playing is extremely talented and well-coached and just dangerous. They know that if we don’t have good days here on the practice field, it’s going to be ugly.”

Girard, despite multiple winning seasons and remaining competitive against the conference’s elite, has been upended annually by a few teams since the NE8’s founding, but none more consistently than South Range and Poland. In the league’s first six years, Girard lost each of its 12 meetings with the Bulldogs and Raiders.

But last week, the Indians made history when they made the trip to Beaver Township and defeated South Range 56-35, earning the program’s first win against the Raiders and handing South Range its first home loss to an NE8 foe.

Similarly, Poland, which had dropped each of its last six games vs. South Range, including two in 2024, crushed the Raiders the week before Girard’s historic victory in a 34-0 shutout.

The respective victories have cleared the path for either team – or both – to break South Range’s stranglehold on the conference.

Whoever wins tonight will improve to 4-0 in league play and take sole possession of first place in the seven-team conference. The victory will also ensure that, with only two games left afterward, one more win would clinch at least a share of the NE8.

If victorious, Poland, the only team other than South Range to win a NE8 football championship, would have to beat Lakeview or Struthers, both at home, to collect a second trophy. Girard, on the other hand, would have to go on the road and beat Hubbard or Niles.

But neither one of the teams, their head coaches said, are getting ahead of themselves.

“You can’t win the conference Friday night. There’s still two more conference games,” Girard head coach Pat Pearson said. “Our goals every year are always to try to win a Northeast 8 championship, to become a playoff team and to go try to win a state championship – those are our three goals all the time. But we don’t really talk much about it after that, to be honest with you. We kind of focus week to week and game to game, and there’s a lot of football past this game still.”

Pavlansky said during the summer that the Bulldogs talked about their goals as a team, which included winning the NE8. But since then, it has been a topic that does not need further discussion.

“We haven’t mentioned a conference or anything like that,” Pavlansky said. “But the kids know – we know – that this is a big one. If we want to accomplish the goal of winning the conference, we need to get this one. But more than that, though, we really don’t talk about winning or losing. We just talk about being the best we can be, and if we do that, then we think in the fourth quarter, it’ll be a ball game, and we’re going to, hopefully, have the best opportunity for success.”

A win for Girard would not only be valuable in its chase for the conference title, but it also would bring a long drought to an end.

The Indians, who went nearly two decades without playing the Bulldogs before the NE8’s founding, haven’t beaten former Metro Athletic Conference rival Poland since 1996, when Pearson was a sophomore. Coincidentally, AJ Pearson, Pat Pearson’s son and the Indians’ starting quarterback, is a sophomore.

“Poland does an outstanding job,” Pat Pearson said. “All the coaches that have gone through throughout the years, and Coach Pav has continued that tradition. They’re hard-nosed kids. They’ve got great athletes. They’re always big and physical. They don’t make mistakes, and they’re not going to beat themselves. And every year, that’s kind of the recipe that they have … if you’re going to beat them, you’re going to have to play well.”

A Girard win tonight could also be very beneficial to the Indians’ Week 9 opponent, Hubbard.

The Eagles, who are 6-1 and 2-1 in conference play entering Friday’s game vs. Lakeview, can earn at least a share of the NE8 if Poland loses at least once in the final three weeks, as the Bulldogs gave Hubbard its only loss of the year on Sept. 19. The Eagles finish up their season vs. Girard and at South Range.

To those at Arrowhead Stadium, though, tonight is all about the Indians and Bulldogs.

Pavlansky remarked that while he believes his team has played in tough road environments, “it’s unlike anything at Girard,” which will be honoring its seniors tonight ahead of the final home game of the regular season and possibly the program’s most consequential game in a long time.

Both coaches believe their teams will navigate through or ignore the festivities, as well as the added stakes and pressure of tonight’s game.

“We just gotta make sure we know that it’s playing football. Let’s play football and make sure we’re doing things that are going to help us have the best opportunity for success,” Pavlansky said.

“This is a different group we have here. … I don’t think this group is – I don’t know, maybe they don’t realize what they’re doing,” Pat Pearson said. “But that’s a good thing, too. I think they’re just locked in. Man, they love playing football. They love playing for each other, they love being Girard Indians and they just go to work. They’re one of the most fun groups that I’ve ever coached. And I think we’re just locked in and just living in the moment and day to day. And when you do that, I think good things can happen.”