LAKEVILLE - The LaVille football team has released its 2024 regular schedule. LHS will play four home contests during the 2024 season, with three of the first four games on the road.  The Lancers will finish up the schedule with three of five home games. For the last 10 years, LaVille participated in the Hoosier North Athletic Conference (HNAC), but will open 2024-25 in the newly formed Indiana Northern State Conference (INSC). Prior to 2015, the Lancers participated in the Northern State Conference (NSC) for 49 years. Starting this fall, the conference will renew those former NSC rivalries as Bremen, Jimtown, John Glenn, Knox, LaVille, and Tippecanoe Valley begin play in the INSC. We had a chance to chat with LaVille football coach Jeff Kaiser about the new conference and the 2024 football schedule. "This new conference is loaded with tradition rich football programs, that's no secret," said Kaiser when asked about the new direction.  "When the new conference was formed I think each HC (head coach) has every team circled as a team to beat.  This will be a very interesting and exciting conference for each school." With the conference changes, LaVille's regular season football schedule will be familiar, yet different. Three schools will be new to the Lancer schedule - Central Noble, Tippecanoe Valley, and Whiting. "We were able to add a couple teams due to having a small number of teams in our conference," Kaiser said of the schedule adjustment. "So Will Hostrawser and myself sat down and discussed what we would be looking for in an opponent and then he put some feelers out and landed Central Noble and Whiting. The Central Noble program is one we are not very familiar with but is a school similar in size and will present challenges in areas for us as we will travel to them." Kaiser's crew opens the 2024 season with a scrimmage against Prairie Heights.  The Panthers joined the LHS schedule in 2021, replacing Wabash. The scrimmage is set for Friday, August 16, in LaGrange, IN., at 7 p.m. Former Hoosier North Athletic Conference foes Triton and North Judson-San Pierre start the 2024 season for the Lancers. Although the Trojans had some lean times a few years back, Triton is back on the rise.   The BlueJays have a rich football history and made a run deep into the playoffs recently.  NJSP brings back another solid club and is looking to improve on three straight semi-state appearances in 2023, 2022, and 2021. Both Triton, who finished 8-4 a year ago and lost to the BlueJays 33-7 in the 1A sectional final, and North Judson-San Pierre, which closed at 9-5 last season after losing to Adams Central in the 1A north semi-state, should start the 2024 season in the Class 1A top 10. Central Noble finished 4-7 last fall, but the Cougars appear on the upswing.  "With us joining the Indiana Northern State Conference it has shuffled our schedule a bit," Kaiser explained when asked about the newcomers on the schedule.  "As we have had some very intense battles with Triton and North Judson, we as a program wanted to keep these rivalries going and with the AD's all agreeing, they made it happen.  With that being said, our schedule will present to us a tremendous challenge week in and week out.  We won't change our approach to how we prepare, we just have to be efficient with our time as we prepare to do battle.    If I said the season would be easy, then the question would arise of would we be ready for Tourney Time and get the chance to play in November for hardware.  There is no doubt in my mind that with the 9 weeks we have in our regular season that the team and staff will be seasoned for a postseason run!" Week four through eight finds Kaiser's club in the midst of a five-week battle for conference supremacy. The Friday night INSC wars will start at rival Bremen on September 13, before Tippecanoe Valley (September 20) pays its first-ever visit to Lancer Field.  Knox, who was the lone regular season loss for LaVille is 2023, will play host to LaVille on September 27.  John Glenn, also a long-time rival, pays a visit to Lakeville on October 4. Jimtown closes out the loop run by making the quick trip down US 31 on October 11.  It will be the first confrontation between the former NSC rivals since September 6.  The Jimmies won that two-day affair, 6-3.  Only the first half of the game was played on a Friday night due to storms that produced severe cloud to ground lightning.  The second half was played on the following Saturday. "Yeah, playing Bremen and Glenn is always an exciting time for the communities involved and that has continued even when we were in the HNAC and they both were in the NIC," Kaiser noted about the always-spirited rivalries. "So it was playing for bragging rights with our neighbors, but now we are also going to be battling them for a conference championship so that turns things up a notch for sure!!  Those rivalries are always what Friday nights are about!" A week nine visit to Whiting will close the season.  The Lancers and Oilers have met nine times overall, but never in the regular season. "Whiting has been a sectional opponent of ours in which we have had success against," said Kaiser.  "What stands out to me as a coach is that they have great facilities, a disciplined program with a new coach and as we will be traveling there, I feel will prepare us mentally and physically by having the extended ride on a bus for when we start the postseason, our guys will have experienced the distractions of a long travel ahead of time, and we can adjust some things if needed as a team on how we handle travel." As July comes to a close, the Lancers are closing up off-season workouts as the official start of the 2024 high school football season. "Summer workouts have gone well and I have seen tremendous improvement from the start back at the end of May until now in all our guys," noted Kaiser.  "We are wrapping them up as we have last week of July off for Family Week. "The guys have sacrificed part of  their summer in preparation for a highly anticipated season that is right around the corner and we look forward to making LaVille Football our community's Friday Night destination spot."