Kickoff for high school football nears

Area high school football teams have returned to the practice fields as they prepared for the 2022 season.

Members of the Mississippi High School Activities Association will participate in jamboree scrimmages this weekend.

Neshoba Central will be playing at Northwest Rankin on Friday while Philadelphia High School travels to Ridgeland to play two jamboree games against Forest and Yazoo County. Union plays in a jamboree at West Lauderdale and on Saturday, Choctaw Central plays in the Louisville jamboree.

The Neshoba Central Rockets lost a lot of seniors from last year’s team that went 12-1 and made it to the North State finals.

“We are going to be young,” Schoolar said. “We lost a lot. We lost our quarterbacks and three receivers. We lost on O-lineman to graduation, one to injury, one to transfer and one quit. Nobody makes or breaks the football team for us anymore. We will find people to play.”

The Rockets had a busy summer but Schoolar said rain has been a problem during the first week of fall drills.

“I have been pleased with the way we have practiced,” said Neshoba Central coach Patrick Schoolar, “We have been out for a week and the biggest problem has been fighting the rain every day.

“I was pleased with our summer turnout. The young kids have turned out and really had a good summer for us. We played a lot of 7-on-7. We needed that for our young quarterbacks and young receivers.”

The Rockets open the season on the road August 26 at Olive Branch.

Philadelphia coach David Frey said his Tornadoes have improved and matured over the summer. The Tornadoes open the season at home August 26 against Noxubee County.

“This group really likes to play football and be around each other,” Frey said. “They were complaining the other day when we had to stop practice because of the rain. We haven’t had that in a way.

Choctaw Central and Union open the season August 26 when the Warriors host the Yellowjackets.

Union football coach Jordan Wren said the Yellowjackets got off to a good start this week as they finally got to put on full pads.

“I thought the defense was good,” Wren said. “We are fast and experienced over there so there is nothing new there. We had a short whistle scrimmage on Friday and we had a 50-play scrimmage with one on ones. That’s a good number of plays to see how in shape we are. We got the chains out and put the kids in game-like situations. Our immaturity showed in some places. We just wanted to see how our kids would respond.”