Lights announce 2023 schedule

About ready to begin spring football, the Montana State University-Northern Lights now have a schedule to prepare for.

Northern head coach Jerome Souers recently announced MSU-N's 2023 schedule, which includes two non-conference games, and an exhibition game.

"We are excited to finally complete our fall competition schedule for 2023, with exciting home games and a few different opponents," said coach Souers. "Our schedule reflects three non-conference games before our first conference counter against Arizona Christian University."

Indeed, Arizona Christian is playing its first season of Frontier Conference football as the league continues to expand. But, before the Lights get to that contest, they'll open the season against Mayville State Aug. 26. Northern has played Mayville in a non-conference game twice before, both wins for the Lights.

Also in a non-conference outing, the Lights will play the first of two games against the Rocky Mountain College Battlin' Bears on Sept. 2. MSU-N normally plays Rocky twice in conference, but with ACU coming into the league, one of the games between the Bears and Lights was changed to a non-conference tilt.

Following their first two home games, the Lights will then travel to Kennewick, Washington, for a scrimmage against Pacific Northwest Christian College Sept. 9, before heading to Arizona to match up with the Firestorm Sept. 16. Northern beat ACU in a 2019 non-conference game, and was slated to host the Firestorm in 2020, but that game was part of the canceled fall season due to the pandemic.

"We have arranged a full 11 game competition schedule with one being a traveling scrimmage," Souers csaid. "We will visit Kennewick, Washington, for a full game scrimmage versus PNWCC, a contest that will not statistically count, but give our team another opportunity to establish improvement."

MSU-N's Frontier schedule includes hosting Carroll College Sept. 30, Eastern Oregon University Oct. 7, Southern Oregon University Oct. 21, and Montana Tech Nov. 4.

The Lights will travel to defending Frontier champion College of Idaho Oct. 14, Montana Western Oct. 21 and RMC in the season finale Nov. 11.

Northern went 0-10 in the Frontier Conference a season ago, but the Lights have now gone through a full season and a full recruiting cycle under Souers, the former head coach at Northern Arizona, who is the Big Sky Connference's all-time winningest coach.

As for the 2023 schedule, Souers says it will serve to make what should be another young Lights team even better.

"I believe it will be helpful for our young team to have a non-conference opening opponent; the Mayville State Comets (Norther Star Conference) bring an exciting brand of football to Havre," he said. "The Frontier conference looks as challenging as ever, but we are eager to see how far our team has come in a year."