On Monday afternoon, Jireh Edwards was bouncing up and down on the frigid practice field, shaking out his arms for warmth.

Edwards had shown up to Cherry Hill Park on time and fully dressed in pads, but his teammates — making a roughly 15-minute commute from Saint Frances’ East Baltimore campus to the park in the south of the city — were still trickling in, lacing up their cleats and squeezing into their jerseys with hooded sweatshirts underneath.

This is already going to be the longest football season Edwards has ever played, and this might be the coldest game he plays for a while. In a few weeks, Edwards is headed to Tuscaloosa for early enrollment with the Alabama Crimson Tide, one of the five-star recruiting jewels of their class. He already has reaped financial rewards, signing a reported million-dollar NIL deal this summer along with Terps-bound teammate Zion Elee.

Edwards doesn’t need money. He doesn’t need to secure his football future. He doesn’t need to be freezing in the frosty early Maryland winter for any reason — except in the last month, Saint Frances has gotten something new to play for: a high school national championship.

It’s the perfect opportunity for a program whose recent motto might as well be: “Any place. Any time.”

For the Panthers (8-1), who are ranked No. 2 in the country by MaxPreps, Wednesday’s ESPN 2-televised game against Utah powerhouse Corner Canyon is an opportunity that they thought just a month ago they wouldn’t get. Saint Frances was set to play for a de facto national title against Florida talent mill IMG Academy in November, but the game was postponed and finally canceled.

Edwards was crestfallen when IMG bowed out over what they said were safety and college transition concerns. But after Saint Frances beat IMG last season 30-3, he wasn’t surprised either.

“We’re the No. 1 team in the country, they know we’re the No. 1 team in the country,” Edwards said. “That’s why they don’t want to play us.”

In Corner Canyon, the Panthers have found a willing opponent. The Chargers are MaxPreps’ No. 23-ranked team, and in their 12 years as a school, they have won three straight state championships in Utah’s largest division and have two quarterbacks (Zach Wilson and Jaxson Dart) in the NFL. One of the starring players on the team is Jaxson’s younger brother, Diesel Dart, who is a hard-hitting safety with a motor to match his name.

If you ask the Panthers, the opponent is beside the point. The school has played a national schedule for years since being exorcised from the MIAA — essentially for being too talented.

Since then, the Panthers have travelled all over — California, Connecticut, Indiana. This is not the first Utah team they’ve played, and coach Messay Hailemariam said, “We’ll probably go back to Utah next year.”

This willingness to play anybody at any time made Saint Frances an ideal candidate to work with Overtime, a sports media company based in New York that has arranged the championship game, from the location at the Under Armour campus to the ESPN team of Dan Orlovsky and Joe Tessitore calling the broadcast. There’s also a pro-level purse: The winning school gets a $250,000 donation (the losing school has to settle for a mere $100,000).

Overtime general manager Hunter Mandel had worked with Hailemariam since January to arrange a game that could be considered a national-champion caliber game. Corner Canyon, led by longtime Utah prep coach Eric Kjar, drew Overtime’s attention because it, too, defeated IMG Academy last year.

After the IMG game fell through for Saint Frances, it made sense to Mandel to recruit the Utah powerhouse Chargers and their high-octane offense to go against a ferocious defense (led by Edwards and Elee) that has allowed just one touchdown in its last five games.

One of the most enthusiastic people to see the matchup was Hailemariam, Mandel said.

“What’s great about when I’m working with Messay, is Messay doesn’t shy away from competition,” Mandel said. “Like, he tells me, ‘Hey, this is gonna be a good game,’ or ‘This is not gonna be a good game.’ And he’s like, ‘Corner is a great team. This is gonna be good.’”

Saint Frances considers IMG its rival, so the late scratch of the game hit them hard. Players aren’t shy about accusing IMG of “ducking” them after last year’s lopsided 30-3 affair, and they were dismayed when they slipped from the No. 1 ranking in subsequent weeks when the only knock against them was that their opponent withdrew.

“For them to pull out the last minute, it was devastating,” Hailemariam said. “All they thought was about themselves, not everything that we had prepped for.”

Saint Frances relishes such opportunities to get eyes on its program, a key reason 18 of its seniors are committed to play football in college next year.

The Panthers have already played one game on national television against Chaminade-Madonna in Florida, and they swatted them 42-13. Their sole loss of the season was by a single touchdown to St. John Bosco, a California football institution.

If Overtime’s finances can match its lofty ambitions, the organization would like to institute a 16-team playoff from teams across the country — exactly the kind of bracket where Saint Frances could star, given that it is already a globe-trotting program.

“We’re trying to get people on board and to understand the vision,” Mandel said. “I want this to be a 16-team playoff where you have the best high schools in Cali, Georgia, in the DMV all playing each other to actually find out who is the best team in the country.”

Saint Frances players know what it is to be willing to travel for football. Jae’Oyn Williams, the team’s starting quarterback, came to Baltimore three years ago from Woodbridge, Virginia, hoping to earn higher visibility and a football scholarship. A year ago, his family moved to Baltimore with him. Next fall, he’ll be playing for the Virginia Cavaliers — his orange-and-blue cleat laces signify his allegiance.

He, too, doesn’t need to play any more high school football to secure the future he moved his family for. But for him, winning on Wednesday would validate the entire experience — his relocation, his fight up the depth chart, the workouts in the school basement and the drives to practice fields.

A claim to being the best high school team in the country would top it all off for a team that will show up anywhere, anytime to play football.

Any doubts in taking this on?

“None at all,” Williams said. “If we play our game, we’ll have a beautiful one.”