The Georgia High School Association has cleared up some schedule information recently in regards to the upcoming football season. The GHSA has informed coaches and athletic directors that schedules will remain as oringinally designed, and are simply pushed back two weeks.
Teams will still have two bye weeks, and will be able to play scrimmage games on Aug. 21 and 28. The season will start Sept. 4 and the GHSA playoffs will begin on Friday, Nov. 27 on the day after Thanksgiving.” A five-game playoff schedule is still in place as well, with championship games taking place beginning the Monday following Christmas.
“I’m glad we finally got everything cleared up,” said Southeast Bulloch coach Barrett Davis. “Knowing we will still be able to play our two scrimmage games was good news as well, as I feel like with as many new players as we have that will be very important for us.”
“Our schedule is backed up two weeks, and there are a lot of positives with that, of course there are some who would see negatives in that,” said Statesboro coach Jeff Kaiser. “It does give us some time to see how this progresses when school starts. It gives you more time, but the flip side is it also gives you more time for error.”
“As far as the scrimmage games go we are still planning on having only one scrimmage, that being against Metter,” Kaiser said. “Many schools are going with two scrimmages, we had one planned for the spring that was cancelled, but we opted to just stay with our one scrimmage game.”
The Statesboro High schedule is still up in the air as the Blue Devils were slated to play in the Erk Russell Classic on August 22 against Wayne County. As of Wednesday afternoon, organizers were still trying to figure out logistics of working that out in regards to date, time and place.
“The Erk Russell Classic is still up in the air,” Kaiser said. “We are waiting to hear word from the EFAA as far as what is going on. I know Georgia Southern has plenty of things going on, and whether or not a September 4th date will work is still in question.”
As for the Bulloch Academy Gators, they received some good news on Tuesday as the GISA announced they were moving their schedule back two weeks as well. The Gators were scheduled to open the season against a pair of GHSA teams with Savannah Country Day and Calvary back to back. Those games will now be played on Sept. 4th at home against Savannah Country Day, and then on the road at Calvary day on September 11th.
“It was really welcome news for us,” said Bulloch Academy coach Steve Pennington. “Not only does it allow us to keep our schedule intact, it also gives us a couple more weeks to implement our schemes on offense and defense.”
Pennington, and most of his staff are new to Bulloch Academy, and while he doesn’t like the way they got to this point, Pennington admits the news could really benefit his team.
“I don’t like the reason for pushing the season back, but it will really help us,” Penington said. We were really feeling rushed, and this gives us a chance to take a breath and be a little more patient with the process. If we had our first game on August 21st we would have been scrambling to get things together. The way it is now we will be able to expand our playbook, and be more specific oriented with things.”
The GHSA is supposed to be reaching out in the next few days to athletic directors and football coaches in regards to how football teams can advance July 27th as it pertains to Covid-19 restrictions and guidelines.
