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HELENA - The Carroll College football team will play their first-ever game against an FCS opponent in 2012, after the Fighting Saints released their schedule on Tuesday.

Carroll will travel to Portland State of the Big Sky Conference, for a contest on September 1. The Saints schedule also consists of league games against the newly-expanded Frontier Conference, including match-ups with Dickinson State and Southern Oregon.

"The challenge will be great," says Carroll athletic director Bruce Parker. "But we are excited to take our championship program on the road to play a quality NCAA FCS program like Portland State University."

The Vikings finished with a 7-4 record in 2011 and will return 13 starters to the remodeled Jeld-Wen Field.

"We are very excited to step up and play Portland State University," says Saints coach Mike Van Diest. "The Big Sky is regarded as the number one FCS conference, our players accept this challenge as well as the challenge of defending our conference title with the newly expanded Frontier Conference schedule."

Carroll has won 12 consecutive Frontier Conference championships, but the league will expand to eight teams in the fall, broken into an East and West division. The Fighting Saints will be joined by Northern, Rocky and Dickinson in the Eastern Division, while Tech, Western, Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon will make up the West. Each team will play a home-and-away series with those in their division, while playing teams from the opposing division once.

The Fighting Saints finished the 2011 season with a 13-2 record, including a runner-up finish in the NAIA National Championship game. Carroll has won six National Championships in eight appearances under Van Diest.

2012 FIGHTING SAINTS FOOTBALL SCHEDULE (Home games in bold. Asterisk denotes conference game)