Coaches tout their teams at Exchange Club

The Jackson Exchange Club traditionally invites the high school football coaches in Jackson and Madison County to appear together at a meeting in August to talk about their teams with some of the members of the community.

Four of the seven TSSAA coaches in the area were there for the meeting with Jackson Christian’s Darby Palmer, Jackson Central-Merry’s Erit Turner, Trinity Christian’s Darren Bowling and University School of Jackson’s Derrick Pritchard.

The four coaches all spoke about their players and their programs, and they all have similar goals at the macro level for their programs – raising young men into being productive members of society for the next generation.

Then the coaches took questions from the audience.

One question was about the biggest obstacle facing their team this year.

“Friday night,” Bowling said before getting laughs from around the room. “But I’m sure all of us have had conversations in the offseason with our coaching staffs about what to look out for or be ready for when we get into the season, but once we get to this point, I know I’m only focused on the next game and what the opponent has for us.”

TCA opens the season with three consecutive home games and ends the season with two more at home. Between those is a stretch of five consecutive games on the road.

Speaking of road games, JCM has five games on the road and five games that are on the schedule as “at home” but they’ll be divided up among the other three Jackson-Madison County Schools football stadiums this year with two games each being played at North Side and South Side and the other at Liberty. Ground is scheduled to be broken later this year on the Cougars’ stadium with plans of opening next year.

“That’s something we’ll deal with, but we’ve dealt with it the last couple years already,” Turner said. “We’ll play wherever we’re told the game is.”

JCM opens the season Friday at Liberty. The other three teams all open at home: USJ against Peabody, Jackson Christian against Northpoint Christian and TCA against Chester County.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news