“We have to make sure,” he added, “we’re comfortable with those other teams and what they’re doing to mitigate the virus.”

What’s immediately at stake, particularly from an historic perspective, is Decatur High’s 100th consecutive football season on the same site between McDonough Street and Commerce Drive (formerly Oliver Street). Decatur has had only one previous cessation in football seasons since its inaugural game on Oct. 13, 1913 (when the school occupied to second floor of what’s now Glenwood Elementary).

Decatur High played one game in 1913, one in 1914 and two in 1915. In October, 1915, a Decatur player named Davis Chambers was killed in a game vs. Marist, on what newspaper accounts called “the McDonough Field,” a site whose location today is utterly forgotten.

But after that fatality, during an era that pre-dated helmets and the sport faced considerable censure nationwide, Decatur didn’t field another football team until 1921. By then DHS had moved to the present campus and the football squad began playing on the present location.

Although there’ve been three separate stadiums on the spot, this is the same location, the same east to west configuration, that was site for the first lighted high school football game in Georgia history, played Oct. 17, 1930, when Decatur beat Athens 13-0.

If competition’s approved, DHS would have a truncated 2020 season, though not as abbreviated as 1913-15. The first game would be Oct. 2 against Arabia Mountain, and the first home game Oct. 16 against Lithonia High, the original homecoming date. The team has only three home games scheduled, which raises the question of fan attendance, or what Dude calls, “the biggest hurdle on any of the competition proposals.”

“I am petitioning to let fans come in,” Rodney Thomas said. “Right now I’m not sure how many I’ll ask for. Our stadium seats 4500, and I won’t ask for more than 15 percent [of capacity]. If things go well after the first game we might consider hiking it up.”

Meantime the softball team’s first of only five regular-season games is Oct. 1 with its region tournament beginning in mid-October, while cross country opens Oct. 2 with playoffs commencing in early November.