The First Game of a New Season Is Always Special

For the Piedmont Academy football team the new season has arrived.

The Cougars will open the 2017 campaign Friday when they host Bethlehem Christian Academy. After months of anticipation, kickoff has finally arrived.

Hours upon hours of work have gone into preparing for the new football year. From offseason conditioning to weight training to preseason practice, Piedmont players and coaches are eager to see what the new season will bring.

The Cougars and Knights met in last season’s opener with BCA holding on to win in dramatic fashion. All indications are the game will be competitive once again this August.

For football fans like myself, there will always be something special about the first game of a new campaign. Weeks have become months in terms of anticipation and at times it seems as if kickoff will never arrive.

However, we are literally only hours away now.

With the first game of the 2017 being played on Aug. 11, there is as much concern about conditioning as there is what the opponent on the other side of the line of scrimmage will do. It’s common now in fact for game officials to work in extra breaks during early-season games to make sure players have plenty of water to stay hydrated.

Piedmont and BCA have played each other several times and a rivalry of mutual respect between the programs has formed. The Cougars traveled to BCA in fact earlier in the summer for a 7-on-7 event as Knights coach Lance Fendley spoke of his praise for Piedmont coach Wes Tanner.

The two teams compete in different classifications in the GISA with BCA at Class AAA and Piedmont at Class AA. Despite that difference, the fact the Cougars have the more established program in terms of years had given them the edge until last season.

High school football is always something special in small town America. While other teams will not begin their new seasons for another week or so there are many across the state who kick things off this week.

It will be interesting to see how the players for both teams perform in what will be the first of several contests in 2017. Both hope this will be the first step on the road to the playoffs even though this game will not count in the region standings for either school.

As Friday night’s game arrives, it will also be a special time for the parents and family members of the players as well as the cheerleaders and managers representing both teams. It will be a memorable evening for alumni of both schools who continue the tradition of watching their alma mater compete.

High school football has a way of making the stress that we go through disappear if only for a few hours on Friday evenings. It’s another thing that is magical about this sport which has been around for generations.

Lasting memories are made on fields of grass 100 yards long. It all begins again this Friday. All indications are it should be an entertaining event to watch.

Monticello native Chris Bridges is a long-time newspaper columnist. He welcomes feedback from readers of The Monticello News at pchrisbridges@gmail.com.