A few years ago, leaders of a local youth football program decided to start getting their middle school players better prepared to play on the Sheboygan North and South teams they’d eventually feed into.

They’re taking what they hope is an important step in that direction this fall.

Kids in the Sheboygan Youth Football program will start playing in a new traveling league this fall that program leaders hope will pair them up against the same athletes they’ll eventually line up against in high school.

“The level of competition is going to be so much higher,” Bill Thiel, the youth program’s president and a former junior varsity coach at North, said of the program’s expected schedule in the Great Lakes Independent Football Conference.

The traveling league includes schools in Manitowoc and around the Green Bay area — as well as a team in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — and will hopefully give Sheboygan-area football players a chance to familiarize themselves with players who’ll eventually feed into the schools that North and South regularly play each season, Thiel said.

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