BOSTON (AP) – A handful of high school football players in Massachusetts are being forced to choose between academics and athletics next Saturday, when the SAT is being offered on the same day as championship games.

Roger Walker, a senior at Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical High School in Easton, says he’ll play. Sokol Sota, a senior at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Boston, says he’s taking the SAT.

Southeastern Regional and O’Bryant are matched up in the Division 4 Eastern Massachusetts “Super Bowl.”

The 17-year-olds told The Boston Globe that the decisions were difficult.

“It’s a hard choice for me,” said Walker, a linebacker and offensive guard. “College is my future. I need the SATs to go to college. But I’ll probably play because it’s my last game. If I don’t play, I’ll let my whole team down.”

Sota wants to improve his score – he got 1,420 out of a possible 2,400 when he took the SAT for the first time Oct. 8 – in hopes of being accepted by Northeastern University, which has a Jan. 15 application deadline. That means Saturday is his last shot at the SAT.

“I really, really wanted to be at the game because I’ve been at every game,” said Sota, who wants to be an engineer. “The final game, the Super Bowl, that’s like a huge, major game. But as much as I love playing football, school comes first for me.”

Walker, who had registered for the Dec. 3 SAT, has another chance to retake the test Jan. 28 because his desired schools, Curry College or Fitchburg State, follow rolling admissions policies. Still, he’s passing up an extra shot at improving his score.

Walker’s mother and his school’s principal asked the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association to move the game to Friday. But the association won’t reschedule because it already has contracts with stadiums and bus companies, spokesman Paul Wetzel said. He reminded that there were two earlier test dates this fall.

“Everybody knows when the SATs are every year. The coaches know it. The principals know it. The athletic directors know it. We reminded the coaches over the summer to tell their football players that if they think they’re going to have a championship season, they had better take care of the SATs on some other day other than the third of December.”

Twenty-eight high schools will play in Super Bowls, although most teams will not be determined until Tuesday’s playoff games.