Note to Our Readers: Resident Press would like to introduce Mrs. Ronni Tate Young as a new contributing sports photographer. Mrs. Young will be photographing Charleston sporting events this year. The photos in today’s story were taken by Mrs. Young. Welcome Ronni, and to our readers, you will love her photos this year!
There is nothing like starting your football season off with a preseason scrimmage against a school that has won a state title in the last two years and have been in contention for others over the course of their program’s history. That’s exactly what the Charleston Tigers did on Tuesday when they hosted the Booneville Bearcats at Alumni Field.
The scrimmage against the Bearcats was in part made possible by the change of conferences for the two schools. Both Charleston and Booneville have been members of the same conference in recent years, and during that time, it is usually not customary to scrimmage against a conference school that you will play later in the season. But this year, the Booneville Bearcats have moved to a different conference and will not face the Tigers later this season unless the two schools were to meet in the post-season playoffs. So, the change in schedules created an opportunity for both schools to scrimmage against a quality opponent to help their teams prepare for the upcoming season. Booneville and Charleston have had a history of scrimmages, and originally, a three team “jamboree” format scrimmage was planned with Charleston, Booneville, and Lamar. But a AAA policy that limited scrimmages to two schools prevented Lamar from playing in the scrimmage.
The Tigers will begin the season with 38 players on their active senior high roster. This year’s team features a talented sophomore class that dominated their junior high opponents as ninth graders. Mixed in with the young talented are several players who played last year in key positions and will bring valuable experience to the 2020 Charleston team this season. The increased numbers and young talent on the team have caught the eye of many media outlets, including Hooten’s Arkansas Football that has predicted a second place conference finish this year behind Cedarville.
Charleston head football coach Ricky May was pleased overall with his team’s performance during the scrimmage. After the game, Coach May remarked, “The big thing was that we got out of the game without any injuries. So, I was really pleased with that. We started five sophomores on defense and five on offense, so going in we knew there may be a little bit of a learning curve from our younger kids, and there was. We made some young mistakes, but overall, the effort was really good and I feel like our depth is a little better than I thought it was. So, that part of it was good. Our kids were glad to just finally get a chance to hit someone else, but overall I felt that Booneville looked really good and we had our chances against them. We didn’t catch a pass on fourth down in the end zone that would have tied the game. We feel good knowing that we played a lot of kids and played against a good football team.”
The Tigers and Bearcats will resume their preseason preparation tonight with a junior high scrimmage between the two schools. The scrimmage will start at 6 p.m. in Charleston. The 7th grade teams will play first, and will be followed by the junior high scrimmage. Resident Press will have a recap of the junior high scrimmage on Friday.
Watch for the Charleston Tigers football preview in Resident Press next week. Stay with RP for complete coverage throughout the 2020 high school football season!
