When the WIAA decided two months ago to deny a proposal that would shift football competition from conference to district, Joel Babinec had a big job in front of him.

The Onalaska Luther High School athletic director was already scrambling when the association voted on that measure, and his early work has been paying off.

The Knights had to leave Minnesota's Three Rivers Conference before the vote because they couldn't commit to a conference schedule. In an attempt to build an independent one, Babinec started ringing phones.

He now is just one game short of providing the football program with a full schedule after adding the Southeastern Wisconsin Home School Saints, who were defeated by Sparta last season, in Week 5 (Sept. 24).

"I had done some legwork, so that helped," Babinec said. "I started getting some contact from other schools, and we went from four games to seven pretty quickly.

"Initially, we thought we wouldn't be able to field a full schedule, but that's no longer true."

The Knights, who will play Blair-Taylor, Whitehall, Plainview-Elgin-Millville, Markesan, Montello/ Princeton/Green Lake, Pardeeville, Aquinas and the Saints, only have the final week open.

They'll have to win six of those games to qualify for the playoffs as an independent team, but it wasn't too long ago that they loved the sound of even having six games.

"Sometimes you can't be choosey about who you play, and this was one of those times," Babinec said. "But a benefit in what we've done is that a lot of the schools we'll play are very similar to us in size."