Consistency is a lie in high school sports. For Mogadore, the illusion lasts exactly four weeks into the 2026 season. After that, the map gets thrown out the window. The Wildcats open with a familiar four-game stretch, but their final five weeks feature a massive overhaul. Only Pymatuning Valley survives from last year’s late-season slate. The rest? A chaotic mix of old rivals, massive school size disparities, and long-lost opponents.
Take Week 5. Mogadore swaps one Akron school for another, trading Ellet for a matchup against North. The following week brings a reunion with Linsly, a private academy out of Wheeling, West Virginia. These two programs haven’t banged heads since a three-year run ending in 2018, a stretch where the Wildcats took two out of three.
Then comes the real weirdness. The season wraps up with Marlington in Week 9 and Brush in Week 10. Mogadore handled Brush back in 2021, but you have to dig back at least fifty years to find the last time they shared a field with Marlington.
It is a scheduling nightmare of David versus Goliath proportions. Mogadore is playing up. Way up. Brush is a Division II school, and Marlington sits in Division IV. To balance the scale, the Wildcats also kept their traditional small-school bloodfeuds alive. Canton Central Catholic and Dalton are back on the docket. Mogadore has battled the Crusaders in four of the last five years, but Dalton has been a thorn in their side, handing the Wildcats losses in three consecutive meetings.
This program does not rebuild. They do not reload. They just win. Mogadore hasn’t suffered a losing season since Bill Clinton’s first term in 1997. To keep that streak alive, they will have to navigate three playoff teams from last autumn: Dalton, Malvern, and Pymatuning Valley. The other six teams on the schedule combined for a dismal showing last year, mostly winning three games or fewer, though Canton Central Catholic and Marlington can blame that on playing absolute meat-grinder schedules.
Here is how the 2026 campaign shakes out:
Aug. 21: Crestwood, 7 p.m.
Aug. 28: @ Canton Central Catholic, 7 p.m.
Sept. 4: Dalton, 7 p.m.
Sept. 11: Malvern, 7 p.m.
Sept. 18: @ Akron North, 7 p.m.
Sept. 25: Linsly, 7 p.m.
Oct. 2: Pymatuning Valley, 7 p.m.
Oct. 16: @ Marlington, 7 p.m.
Oct. 23: Brush, 7 p.m.
