Mountains have been moved this year. First it happened on the gridiron. Tonight it’ll happen on the hardwood. Specifically, I refer to Griffin High and Spalding High’s varsity teams playing against one another.

What could be more natural? Heck, it’s not like the kids and coaches don’t all know each other. Could you ever picture Georgia not scheduling Georgia Tech, Alabama not scheduling Auburn of the Navy not scheduling the Army? It just wouldn’t be right.

While both local public high schools have met in all other sports (cross country, cheerleading, softball, wrestling, riflery, girls basketball, track and field, tennis, golf and soccer) since Spalding opened its doors in the fall of 2000, up until this season the big three - football, boys basketball and baseball - remained the lone holdouts.

Then that changed. Although varsity preseason scrimmages had been played here and there and a few junior varsity games had taken place, the ice wasn’t officially broken until Spalding and Griffin worked out a deal in late 2007 that was finalized in early 2008 to meet Sept. 5 on the gridiron.

A few weeks after that game both varsity basketball teams proudly announced they’d tipoff against each other in games tonight at Griffin and Jan. 31 at Spalding.

Both baseball teams have unofficially talked in the past about the prospects of a preseason scrimmage. A regular season home-away series would be even better.

The time has come for both schools to play each other across the board if at all possible. Perhaps someday this will become a moot point if both schools end up being placed in the same region.

For now, however, Spalding remains in Class AAA, while Griffin remains in Class AAAA. For the record, Griffin’s reclassification number last fall was 1,593.5, which was about in the middle of its region, while Spalding’s was 1,323.0, which was at the top of its region.

Sullivan is the sports editor at the Griffin Daily News.