Published: March 03, 2006 10:19 am      

Last minute changes to 2006 football schedule

Jackson will welcome Marietta in pre-season

It’s only March, but Head Coach Mike Parris and the Jackson High School Red Devils Football team are already having problems in regards to their upcoming leap to AAA this Fall.

Fortunately, the problem that Jackson faces has to deal with the team’s schedule – not players, coaches, contracts or eligibility.

However, for one of their new opponents, that’s not the case.

In the Fall, the Red Devils will make the move from Region 4AA to Region 4AAA. For Dutchtown High School, who originally was going to be a region opponent for the Red Devils, they will be climbing a little higher in classification than originally anticipated.

The three-year old Henry County school made an error in its expected population growth for the 2006-2007 and the 2007-2008 school years, which will force the team to move from AAA competition to AAAAA.

Normally, an error this dramatic would eliminate a school from post-season and region competition for a two-year period. But luckily for Dutchtown High School their partners from the East side of Henry County – Eagles Landing High School – came to the rescue by swapping regions with the Bulldogs. So, Eagles Landing will now join the Red Devils in Region 4AAA while Dutchtown jumps to AAAAA.

Instead of traveling to North Hampton for the regular season finale on November 3, the Red Devils and their fans will have to make a right hand turn off I-75 at the Jodeco Road exit and travel to Eagles Landing High School.

Luckily, the Red Devils were given a break with the quick swapping of its regular season opponents, but it wasn’t the team’s only scheduling conflict. Jackson’s August 25 scrimmage against McIntosh High School was also cancelled last week and with today being deadline day for Georgia High Schools to report their 2006 schedules to the Georgia High School Association, the Red Devils were left in panic mode just to find a pre-season opponent.

After searching around at the last minute, Coach Parris finally announced last Thursday that the Red Devils had found a pre-season opponent. And as if there wasn’t enough controversy with the Red Devils playing two AAAAA schools in the regular season, Parris gave the critics something else to yap about when he announced that the Red Devils would be playing one of the best teams in the state – from class AAAAA.

Marietta High School from Region 5AAAAA, will make the trip to Red Devil Hill on Friday, August 18 to take on Parris and the Red Devils in Jackson’s only pre-season game. Last season the Blue Devils from Marietta finished 10-2 before losing to eventual state runner up from AAAAA – Brookwood High School – in the second round of the AAAAA state playoffs.

The August 18 scrimmage won’t be like the typical 36-minute scrimmage. Instead, Red Devil fans will be treated to a regular season type atmosphere because the game will be played in its entirety. That’s right, 48 minutes of football.

The 48-minute scrimmage will take place exactly two weeks before the Red Devils’ season opener leaving Jackson with an untypical week off before its season opener on September 1 against Union Grove.

The rest of the Red Devils’ schedule will remain the same, but two more important events have also been added – homecoming and senior night. Homecoming 2006 will be Friday, September 29 when the Red Devils host Central-Macon High School and senior night will take place on Friday, October 20 when the newly formed Ola High School comes to Red Devil Hill.