The Lamar Warriors are technically staying in the same conference, the 4A-4, but welcome six new teams all from closer to central Arkansas to form a nine-team conference.
That also means a nonconference schedule that consists of just two games and a short period of preparation for conference play.
"It makes it tough," Lamar coach Josh Jones said. "We've got to be ready to go pretty quick. We've got to get right into it."
Lamar welcomes Waldron to town on Friday for one final tune-up before opening 4A-4 play on Sept. 9 at Dover.
Lamar opened the season with a strong 35-12 win at Huntsville on Friday, and the Warriors were run dominant as usual with 436 yards rushing on 60 carries.
Damien Hendrix led the way with 26 carries for 187 yards and two touchdowns. Jarrett Dalton added 13 carries for 165 yards and three scores, including an 89-yard jaunt in the third quarter.
"We only threw the ball three times," Jones said. "The line performed really well. They opened up some really nice holes."
One of those linemen was senior two-way lineman Shayne Hampton, who has set the goal high for his Warrior teammates.
"We want to win a conference championship and make a deep run in the playoffs," Hampton said. "We've never won an outright conference championship."
Lamar shared a conference championship in 2008, but despite having some very good teams have just been in the wrong league at the wrong time and has never won an outright conference title in its 54 years of playing football.
"We had some really, really good teams that happened to be in a conference with the team that won the state championship or in the conference with Booneville and Charleston and went 8-2 but Booneville was a state semifinal team and Charleston won the state championship," Lamar coach Josh Jones said. "We lost in the playoffs to Smackover, which lost to Charleston in the championship game. There were a couple of years when we were No. 3 preseason in the state and third in our conference. We've been good enough to win the conference but just haven't."
Hampton has started every game in his career at Lamar; at tackle both offensively and defensively last year and at offensive guard as a sophomore. He loves toiling in the trenches in a run-oriented offense.
"We love to move people around, and people don't like to be moved," Hampton said. "It's fun."
Bauxite, Central Arkansas Christian, Clinton, Haskell Harmony Grove, Little Rock Hall and Mayflower are the newcomers to the conference.
"The conference looks pretty even," Hampton said. "There's a bunch of good teams. You've got to play every week."
CHARLESTON
Tigers antsy
The Tigers are ready to get started.
"We were real antsy," Charleston coach Ricky May said. "Everybody else started. It's amazing how much excitement is brings. High school started and college football started with week zero and some NFL preseason games were played. The football blood's boiling, and then ou're not playing."
Charleston did not schedule a week zero game instead playing nonconference games weeks one through three before starting the 3A-1 schedule.
`"We're excited about it, but we like not playing week zero to fix anything from our scrimmage," May said. "We're ready to finally play."
Charleston players spread out and watched other games while May watched a couple of games on-line, including his oldest son, Brock, who is the offensive coordinator at Batesville Southside.
"We had several that went to the Northside-Southside game, and some that went to the Ozark-Clarksville game," May said. "I watched Pottsville-Elkins, and then my son on the other computer."
Charleston opens on Friday on the road at Elkins, a game that will feature top quarterbacks Brandon Scott of Charleston and Slade 'Dizzy' Dean, who moved to Elkins from Greenwood after the first semester last year.
"Listening to the live cast of the game, I heard Dizzy Dean," May said. "I grew up in the Barber area, a little ways down the road where Dizzy and Daffy grew up. It's between Booneville and Mansfield."
Dean threw for 245 yards and three touchdowns while Da'Shawn Chairs ran for 123 yards and two scores to power Elkins to a 32-14 win over Pottsville.
"They're really good," May said. "They throw it well and run it well. When we scheduled it, I knew it was going to be tough. We like those hard challenges the first three weeks to get us ready for conference."
For Scott, it starts a year of redemption of sorts after losing to Centerpoint, 28-23, in the second round of the Class 3A playoffs last year.
"We had a good year, but it didn't end the way we wanted it to," Scott said. "Just one game makes us have a little bad taste in our mouth. We know it was a good year, but as we look back at it we have for sure used it for motivation. We want to get past that second round. We want to prove ourselves and put it all together."
FS SOUTHSIDE
Plan D
Southside's offensive game plan took a hit before the game even started on Friday at Northside when starting running back Amari Tucker suffered a leg injury.
"We had to completely scramble around and put Plan D into place," Southside coach Kim Dameron said. "We moved people around and substituted. He had had a fantastic off-season. He was so ready to play. For him to not be able to play was disappointing to him and us. Our kids rallied and went out and competed."
Tucker was warming up in the end zone prior to the game and injured a leg.
"There was no contact and he just stepped funny," Dameron said. "He's hurt and can't play."
Southside gave up 523 yards in the 42-24 loss but three plays accounted for 208 of them, including a 75-yard scoring run by T'kavion King that put Northside up, 21-10, at the half.
"We gave up three big plays," Dameron said. "The long run before halftime really hurt us. We had several missed tackles. Then once he was outside of us, we weren't going to catch him."
Southside also lost senior linebacker Cole Elwonger on the first defensive series of the game.
"We had some challenges," Dameron said. "As a coaching staff, we stayed calm and tried to get them to compete and not get up in the emotion of losing a couple of their teammates going down early. The emotion of that game is high anyway."
Tucker and Elwonger are both doubtful for Friday's home opener against Van Buren.
MANSFIELD
Great start for the Tigers
The Tigers scored on five of their six possessions in the first half on Friday in a 41-6 win at Magazine and applied the Arkansas Activities Association's Sportsmanship Rule to begin the second half.
"We were pretty pleased," Mansfield coach Tim Cothran said. "Friday was a good day for us. We had a little procedural stuff, but other than that everything was pretty crisp."
Mansfield led 35-0 at the half, punted once, and committed no turnovers for the game.
"The energy has been good," Cothran said. "That's really the major difference this year than the past is there has been a lot of energy and a lot of hype. The guys are really excited about what's going on and excited about what they're seeing. We have 13 seniors, and they're pretty happy with where they are right now."
Quarterback Cole Kindle, a junior who moved to Mansfield in July from Greenwood, was 7-of-9 passing for 143 yards and a 43-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Turnipseed.
"Kindle made some big plays running the football," Cothran said. "He's savvy in the pocket. He does a good job of diagnosing what's happening on the field. He knows when to cut and run."
Last year at Greenwood as a sophomore, Kindle started in a 31-7 win over Mountain Home due to injuries to Hunter Houston and Slade Dean and was 10-of-17 passes for 103 yards.
Friday, he guided Mansfield's offense to a 345-yard performance with running backs Tyler Wooldbright and Fisher Willsey leading the ground game. Wooldbright ran for 61 yards and a 30-yard touchdown, and Willsey added 39 yards and touchdown runs of 5 yards, which capped a 10-play to open the game, and 20 yards.
The schedule gets tougher for the Tigers this week as they hit the road to Paris.
"We start climbing the schedule," Cothran said. "I like the way the schedule is laid out. We go Magazine, Paris and Waldron. We go small, same, big so we'll see where we're at after those three games. Hopefully, we're healthy and things are going in our direction."
OZARK
Rivalry time
Ozark travels to Booneville on Friday for the 85th meeting between the two schools and 73rd straight season for the two to play.
The game marks the second rivalry game in a row for the Hillbillies and the second of three with a trip to Charleston for the Battle of Franklin County next.
Booneville has won five of the last six in the series and leads the all-time series, 53-27-4.
Both teams are 1-0 with Booneville opening with a 36-6 win at Pine Bluff Dollarway while Ozark beat Clarksville, 49-28.
Senior running back Eli Masingale ran for 134 yards and three touchdowns, and senior quarterback Landon Wright added 134 yards and a score rushing. Wright also threw for 113 yards and two second-half touchdowns for Ozark.
Booneville needed just 23 offensive plays to net 368 yards, all on the ground, at Dollarway. Trace Hall ran for 144 yards on five carries with three touchdowns. Dax Goff added 109 yards on seven carries with a touchdown. Rylen Ray ran for 68 yards and a touchdown.