The winter season is off and running in earnest, and with the exception of one sport - actually, one team - will be with us until March.
Mifflin County's bowling team, however, will see two thirds of its season over before Christmas.
The reason was well stated in an answer coach Jamie Barrett-Fetters gave to a question in preseason interviews: There aren't enough contestants for the Huskies to bowl against.
And that's hard to fathom.
Bowling is by far the most popular participation sport in the U.S. And over the past few years, the number of people who go bowling has grown each year.
Locally, both Lewistown Lanes and the Moose have youth programs. There is another bowling alley nearby in Mifflintown. And Best Bowl, located between Middleburg and Selinsgrove, hosts three scholastic teams - Midd-West, Mifflinburg and Selinsgrove.
The Mustangs are the closest to Mifflin County, and the western Snyder team will bowl twice this year against the Huskies, providing their only home opponent. There are historical ties between the two; Midd-West assistant Corey Wert helped get the ball rolling, so to speak, for the local scholastic team.
But only one other team out of the nine in District 4 will take on the Huskies, who are the lone entrant in the sport in District 6 - Milton, the alma mater of former Lewistown athletic director Rick Keefer, who helped set up the series when the program began here.
There are 34 girls and 37 boys teams in District 3, including a small number of Mid-Penn Conference schools - one of which is an opponent of the Huskies in the Commonwealth Division in other sports. But the Mid-Penn doesn't run a bowling league.
That, in fact, leads to one of the things that plays a role in bowling's non-proliferation despite its popularity - it's not a PIAA sport, in the sense that the state's oversight agency for scholastic sports does not sponsor interdistrict competition on the lanes.
The PIAA recognizes the sport - and has guiding rules - but, like four other sports (including another Mifflin County entrant, indoor track), its championship is run by a third party. There is not really a PIAA element - if there was, more PIAA member schools might be likely to offer the sport, which unlike a lot of athletic competitions, is a place where almost anyone can excel.
I find it hard to believe that large schools in District 6 like State College, Altoona and Central Mountain don't have bowling teams. When Lewistown and Indian Valley started their programs, it was with the belief that other Mountain League schools would follow suit - but instead, the two were each others' main rivals until last year, where there became one less team on the horizon.
Districts 3, 7 and 12 each have more than 30 teams. District 1 has 20. But the rest of the state is sparse when it comes to bowling, with three districts having no teams at all.
For a sport with bowling's popularity, that's hard to swallow.
Bowling isn't the only sport that had a hard time filling a schedule - competitive spirit, which became a PIAA sport this year, proved troublesome for several reasons.
The school district got around them and assembled a slate for the team, albeit a strange one - the next competition will be the District 6 event, and it's just the second date on the schedule.
Most of the problems were tied to the fact that it is a new sport, one that schools and PIAA districts have to work into their operations. In response to questions about the schedule process, it came out that one problem the school district had to deal with was working around its Sunday competition ban.
In fact, the district reported, if Mifflin County were scheduled to play any sport on a Sunday, it would not happen - a situation that is rare, but can occur. Just this fall, two field hockey teams held a play-in game on a Sunday prior to the state tournament, after inclement weather pushed it back.
Mifflin County, I was told, would forfeit that game if the PIAA would not relent on scheduling it on a Sunday.
I recall my early days in this field, when one particular league declined to use Wednesday as a play date, presumably for the same reason - and there's nothing wrong with that, despite what some ACLU types might think.
Let's hope that situation never faces one of the local schools.
Jeff Fishbein is sports editor of The Sentinel. Contact him at jfishbein@lewistownsentinel.com.
