The first games of the Texas High School football regular season kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Friday night.
All five of Montague County’s football teams and their new head coaches start the quest to be the best team they can, with only two teams playing home games.
Bowie is traveling to Godly to take on the 4A Wildcats. Godly was a playoff team last year and returns 13 starters on both sides of the ball while also breaking in a new coach.
“They like to get the ball down the field,” Jackrabbits Coach Cory Mandrell said. “They have a big tall receiver they like to throw it to. A lot of their passing game is vertical passing. They like to throw the ball down the field. It is one of our big keys on defense for us.”
Nocona will start the season at home against familiar foe Boyd. A young team last year at key positions surprised some people by making it into the playoffs after the Yellow Jackets started off last year with a big win against the Indians at home.
“We are going to have our hands full,” Indians Coach Rick Weaver said. “We are going to have to come out and execute and do things right. We have to limit mental mistakes if we are going to stay in the ball game.”
The other home game will be at Forestburg. The Longhorns play the private school Lone Star North out of Gainesville. The one thing Forestburg has over the Tornados is experience as Lone Star North returns only a few starters.
A matchup of athleticism versus brawn should prove interesting.
Saint Jo is traveling to Fannindel, a team that shares its district with Montague County’s other two six-man teams. The Falcons won last year’s district title and are favored to win it this year as well.
Coach Mark Stevens’ biggest concern is trying to shutdown running back Dayton Dunbar.
“They are a very fast football team, especially their running back and are a predominately running team,” Stevens said. “They love to crowd the line of scrimmage so we are going to have to do a good job blocking , but I like where we are at.”
Gold-Burg starts of the season on the road at private school Notre Dame Catholic out of Wichita Falls. The Stars have all state running back Nathan Baker returning to carry the load on offense, but a lot of last years starters graduated.
The young Bears will try to prove a lot of doubters wrong and hanging with Notre Dame in any way will show this group has some fight.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.