While it is questionable that the author put this amount of thought into it, the schools in the area seem to go from late August or early September to the end of June or so, while the Bulldog's schedule has their last game of the regular season as the 19th of March. While the playoffs last longer, they still only went to late May this year, and Hamilton did not make the playoffs last year (could do a bit of digging into team quality and management group to see future prospects, but not really feeling like it right now). Weekend visits are entirely possible.

That said, I read that story and time frame wasn't really specified, and I got that impression too because I didn't actually put any thought into it at the time so you're still pretty much correct (unless you take home to mean "in the general vicinity," in which case, the Steelheads arena is apparently only like 20 minutes from the neighborhood he's from, and they play each other 2-3 times a year, but that's not really what we're talking about).