The high school football season in Arkansas will begin for most teams Aug. 26, and in Jefferson County history will be made.
Pine Bluff, White Hall and Watson Chapel will compete in the same conference (5A-Central) for the first time, and all three are going in with new head coaches to their programs for 2022. Two of them, Pine Bluff's Micheal Williams and White Hall's Ryan Mallett, stopped by The Pine Bluff Commercial office at the Donald W. Reynolds Community Services Center for the latest edition of the newspaper's streaming series "The Newsroom," which is dropped today on YouTube.
"They're obviously tough opponents, traditionally, also. I do think it's going to be fun to see, coming down toward the end of the season because we all three are really close in proximity and all three have new coaches," Mallett said. "It'll be interesting to see just how the kids react to it."
Watson Chapel's Maurice Moody, the other first-year head coach at his program, was featured on "The Newsroom" in April.
Williams' Zebras have taken an early look at Mallett's Bulldogs in team camp as summer drills wrapped up this week. High school teams in Arkansas can begin preseason camp Monday.
Williams, a former Zebras' running back who graduated in 2002, said the team camps have been beneficial.
"We actually saw them last week," Williams said during Monday's recording. "We ended up having a good camp. It was a lot of good competition because we don't really know the teams, so by being able to do it then, you get a feel for the teams and what's coming up during the season."
Williams was hired in May to succeed another former Pine Bluff running back, current Marion assistant Rod Stinson. The recent Duncanville (Texas) receivers coach and recruiting coordinator is charged with turning around a tradition-rich program that suffered through its fourth-straight non-winning record (2-7) and uncharacteristically missed the 6A playoffs.
"It's always going to be pressure to win the conference every year," Williams said. "I don't want a job that doesn't have pressure behind it. I don't want a job where I can just sit back and cruise. My coach at Duncanville said, 'I left a job where I was at because I was too comfortable.' I want somewhere I ain't comfortable. I think it's a great situation where we're trying to push to win the conference every year. We're trying to push to win state every year. That's what we're trying to do."
Mallett, best known for a stellar career as a University of Arkansas quarterback (2009-10), was hired at White Hall in February after serving as offensive coordinator at Mountain Home. He takes over a team that reached the 5A state championship game last December under current Little Rock Parkview defensive coordinator Bobby Bolding, but lost 28 seniors.
"The tradition is what I like about the program," Mallett said. "Any time you lose 28 seniors, it's going to be hard to reload, but that's what we've got to do. We only have eight seniors so far, so we're going to be really young."
Among other topics, Williams also shares on "The Newsroom" how he shifted his career from being a chemist at Dallas-area businesses Frito-Lay and Mary Kay to coaching, while Mallett talks about the lessons learned from his head coach at Arkansas, Bobby Petrino.
Pine Bluff has an open date on Aug. 26, when White Hall visits Sheridan, Watson Chapel hosts Texarkana and Dollarway hosts Booneville.