Aug 1, 2025 By Chris Dugan 3 min read

The calendar has flipped to August. For Frontier League teams in postseason contention, that means the pennant race begins in earnest.

However, after this weekend, that pennant race might seem like a long-distance affair for the Wild Things and the Lake Erie Crushers, the top two teams in the Central Division.

Lake Erie entered Friday night’s game at EQT Park, which ended too late to be included in this edition, with a three-game lead over Washington. The teams will play Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in Avon, Ohio. These three games will be the final meetings between the Wild Things and Crushers during the regular season.

For most of the past decade, the Frontier League has used a scheduling format that had teams playing only their division opponents in August. It made for meaningful matchups down the stretch.

With the league expanding to 18 teams this year, with nine clubs in each conference and either four or five teams in each of the four divisions, a new scheduling format had to be implemented. There has to be at least two teams playing interconference games each night.

That will happen with the Wild Things in mid-August, when they play at Quebec, Trois-Rivieres and a home series against Down East. Lake Erie has a home series against Down East remaining.

Washington will be done playing Lake Erie after Sunday, has already finished playing division rival Florence and has one home series left with Evansville. Wild Things manager Tom Vaeth says he doesn’t mind the lack of division games at the end of the season.

“We haven’t played a lot of teams from the other conference. It just happens to be our time now,” Vaeth said. “It could work in our favor. It’s a matter of us handling our business.

“It’s pointless to worry about the schedule. You play whoever comes up on your schedule. Honestly, I don’t have a preference for who you play at this time of year. The games inside your division are import, and we squandered a lot of those.”

Vaeth pointed out that the NFL schedules only division games over the final two weeks of the regular season, “but nobody cares if the Steelers play the Ravens in Week 17 instead of Week 7.”

Lake Erie manager Jared Lemieux said he knows the lack of intradivision games in August is the byproduct of the expanded league, but he’s glad the Crushers have meaningful games remaining against Schaumburg and Gateway, the top two teams in the West Division. The team with the best record in the Midwest Conference – either the Central or West champion – will have home-field advantage in the first two rounds of the postseason.

“We’re trying to win the conference, so those games with Schaumburg and Gateway will be meaningful,” Lemieux said. “The way the schedule is, it doesn’t matter to me. This way leads to a lot of scoreboard watching, which is fun in its own way after you play.

“When you have 18 teams in a big healthy league, it shows that the league is moving forward.”