Coming off of its bye week it is not back to Friday night lights for the South Greene football, instead it will be more like Friday afternoon sunshine for the Rebels when the travel Concord Christian School in Farragut.
The Lions are in their first year of varsity football, and will be playing in their first ever home game on Friday. But with no stadium lights on campus the game will kickoff at 2:30 pm.
“They are a new program and when we talked back in January they wanted to play a home game. This is going to be their first home game,” South Greene coach Shawn Jones said. “I think it will be a unique experience. There is no press box, there’s no stands, there’s no concessions stand, so its going to be different and we will have to adjust some. We are going to play at 2:30 in the afternoon, and I’m okay with that, we’ll play anytime anywhere.”
While the football program at Concord is an upstart the coach certainly is not. The Lions are led by Steve Matthews who won two state championships while coaching at Knoxville Catholic.
Matthews’ squad has plenty of talent, but lacks experience in its first year of varsity action. The Lions will have freshmen, sophomores and even eighth graders throughout the lineup, that includes freshman quarterback Khobe Ward. Last week against a home school team from Georgia Ward was 8-for-8 for 196 yards and four touchdowns.
The Lions will primarily work out of a spread formation, and will try to get the ball to a variety of athletes in space. Jones expects a lot of zone runs, jet sweeps, and designed runs for the quarterback.
They come into the game with a 4-3 record. The wins are over 1-7 Mt. Juliet Christian, Palm Beach Christian of Florida, first-year program Providence Academy, and home-school program the Georgia Force.
“They have some dudes that can flat out play, but they are young. I don’t think they have played anybody as physical as us,” Jones said. “We are going to have to go down there with our A game. And we hope that our maturity can overcome some of what they have in terms of talent.”
The Rebels are 6-1 coming into the game and are riding a six-game win streak. In that span South Greene’s average margin of victory has been 35.2 points.
They are led by the backfield duo of quarterback Nash Rader and running back Tripp Neas who have both become accustomed to running for 100 yards a night. In recent weeks Charlie Lane has emerged as a third option who can make big gains as a runner and a receiver.
On defense South Greene is giving up 12 points per game while boasting a +20-turnover differential.
Friday will be South Greene’s final road game of the regular season. Next week they will return home for a non-region contest with Eagleton before wrapping up the regular season against Region 1-2A rival Happy Valley.
