The season-opening football game between Cherokee and Creekview already had plenty on the line.

It will mark the first meeting between the two county schools, and the first regular-season game for new Cherokee coach Josh Shaw.

Now, there’s another twist as the game, originally set for Friday, Aug. 31, will instead be played one day sooner, on Thursday, Aug. 30.

Shaw and Creekview coach Al Morrell came to an agreement to move the game as a result of an Aug. 31 furlough day for all Cherokee County School District employees. That furlough day leads into the Labor Day break.

“With the furlough day, and it being Labor Day weekend, we didn’t want to lose the gate for people going out of town for a four-day weekend,” said Shaw, whose team will be hosting the game at Tommy Baker Field. “With that being the first game with a new coaching staff, we figured people would go out of town for that Friday game.

“With the furlough day, we were losing a lot of support staff, and it would have been difficult to hose a home game.”

Two other county teams, River Ridge and Sequoyah, are also scheduled to play each other Aug. 31, but River Ridge coach Robert Braucht said no discussions on a new date have taken place between he and Sequoyah’s James Teter.

Though Shaw and host Cherokee initiated the schedule change, it had to be agreed upon by Morrell and Creekview, but the move wasn’t a problem for the visiting Grizzlies.

“It’s (Shaw’s) home game,” Morrell said. “He asked to get a bigger crowd with more people possibly going out of town. The kids wouldn’t be in school and would be out of their routine. It was fine with me.”

For Creekview, it will be its first varsity game played on a Thursday. For Cherokee, it will be the fifth Thursday game in its history, but the first since an Aug. 26, 1976, game with Johnson-Gainesville, according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.

Shaw also has history with Thursday nights. As an assistant under Bill Stewart at Etowah last season, he helped coach the Eagles for a Thursday game at Lassiter, which was televised by WSB-TV.