Beachside plays football tonight at six, in Port St. Lucie.

That is about 200 miles from Barracuda Stadium in a straight line, measured off the two sets of coordinates the statewide scoreboard publishes on its own venue links. By road it is farther.

It is a Monday. It is a school night.

The Barracudas played Fletcher on Friday. They play Westside at home on Friday. That one was 6:30. This one is 7.

This sits in the middle of those two. Three days after one, four days before the other. It is a game left over from week seven.

It is not a district game.

Beachside’s own calendar files it as Non-District and MaxPreps calls it non-conference.

So the schedule asks a high school team for a weeknight and something over 400 miles of road, in a game that will not move them inside 5A District 2, where they are 1-4 and fifth.

Somebody signed that. The contract status on the school’s calendar entry reads Completed.

The part that is actually indefensible

Go and look up what time the game is, the way a parent would.

The school’s own athletic calendar, on FHSAA Home Campus, is the official place.

It has the Legacy game at 6 p.m. on Oct. 1. It has no football on Oct. 26 at any level.

The only Beachside event it carries tonight is a girls’ soccer game at Bishop Kenny at 5:30.

A family checking the official source this morning would find that their team is not playing.

The statewide scoreboard has it right. A commercial site has it right.

The school district’s own feed does not, and that feed is the one the athletic department controls.

That same entry gives the venue as “Bye.” It gives the venue address as 3420 Bristol St, Costa Mesa CA, Costa Mesa, Florida, 92626.

Costa Mesa is in California. It is the calendar vendor’s office, sitting in a field marked Florida, on the record for a game being played in St. Lucie County.

None of that is a rounding error. It is the difference between a sixteen-year-old’s grandmother finding the stadium and not finding it.

What it would have cost to fix

A date change and a venue. Two fields. Neither is hard.

The page’s own timestamp says the schedule was updated at two minutes past midnight on Oct. 26.

Something touched that file today. The game is still on Oct. 1.

And the game underneath it

Here is the thing worth saying about the team on the bus.

Beachside has won four games this year. All four were on the road.

It has lost every game at Barracuda Stadium and won every road game but one, which is the opposite of how this is supposed to work. Nobody can tell you why.

Tonight is a road game.

The other seven county schools have all played nine. Beachside has played eight, and that is the one piece of arithmetic in this that actually favors them, because it is a game in hand against a district that has already mostly got away.

Kickoff is 6 p.m. South County Regional Stadium, 14505 SW Crosstown Parkway.

Not Oct. 1. Tonight.

This is a column, the writer's argument, based on the facts shown above. Our news coverage is held to a separate standard, described on our standards page.