With Hurricane Ian set to make landfall in the West coast of Florida sometime Thursday, many high school football teams throughout the state are trying to adjust schedules in order to attempt to get games in. 

The Southeast Bulloch Yellow Jackets and Portal Panthers are the only two Bulloch County teams slated to play Friday. There has been no word on a schedule change as of Monday night out of Portal, but on Monday the Yellow Jackets announced they are moving Friday’s homecoming matchup with Islands to Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. 

“Looking at the forecast and with it being homecoming we felt it best to try and push the game up to Wednesday,” said SEB coach Jared Zito. “We just weren’t sure how bad it would be Friday or even Thursday, but we felt pretty secure we could get the game in for sure on Wednesday.” 

Many Savannah area schools are preparing to close schools, possibly as early as Thursday and Zito and Islands coach DeShawn Printup felt with the game being their region opener the best way to get it in was to move it to Wednesday. 

“There’s chance many Savannah area schools could close as early as Thursday which would prevent them from playing,” said Zito. “We both felt like Wednesday would be so much better than trying to play next Monday, and then have to turn around and play again on Friday.” 

With only two days to prepare Zito knows it is not ideal, but feels confident that the Jackets will be ready. 

“We actually had a pretty normal Monday for the most part,” said Zito. “Tuesday we will try and cram a little bit of what we do Wednesday in. The good thing is we are pretty much at the middle of the season and a lot of the things you spend a lot of time with as far as the little things are over by this time. I think we are in pretty good shape and the quick turnaround shouldn’t really hurt us.” 

The Jackets are currently 1-4 and are coming off a tough 38-33 loss Friday at Hephzibah. Zito felt like the Jackets had plenty of chances to win Friday on the road, but they were unable to make the big plays down the stretch. 

“I thought we really clicked pretty good on offense Friday at Hephzibah,” said Zito. “We stalled early on a couple drives and had to settle for field goals, but aside from that we really moved the ball well. On defense we probably played our worst game. We struggled and I take the blame for some of that. Sometimes you ask the players to do a little more than they may be capable of doing and this week we are going to get back to some things they feel more comfortable with going back to our base defense.” 

Wednesday the Jackets (1-4) will welcome in an Islands team who has struggled more than they have as Islands is currently 0-5 and has been outscored 225-22 by their opponents this season. 

“They have some athletic kids and we will have to tackle in space better than we have been doing,” said Zito. “They have some really good players on defense and we have to make sure we take care of the ball on offense.  

Southeast Bulloch and Islands are scheduled to kick off Wednesday at 7:00 at Fred Shaver Field.