The Paris Eagles unofficially opened the 2022 high school football season on Tuesday night by hosting the Magazine Rattlers in a preseason scrimmage. In addition to giving the teams a dress rehearsal for next week’s start to a new season, the game, along with others around the state, was held to benefit the Arkansas Activities Association’s catastrophic injury fund.
The Paris junior high Eagles kicked-off the night with a scrimmage versus the junior high Rattlers. Paris is expecting a big year from its junior high team this year, although the team is relatively young with several eighth graders occupying the roster. The feeling around the Paris football program is that the young Eagles may have a chance to seriously contend for a junior high conference title in their new conference. It will be a conference that has very tough travel on Thursday nights for Paris and the other member schools, but, the size and athleticism of Paris is expected to give the junior high Eagles a good shot a possibly winning a conference title.
The future is bright for the Paris program, but until the current eighth and ninth graders reach the varsity roster, head coach Jeff Weaver will focus on developing the current varsity players to continue the success the program had in his first year as the Eagles’ head coach.
It is not news to Eagles fans that the varsity program graduated a deep and talented class at the end of the 2021 season that was perhaps the most successful class in the program’s history. Paris won 12 games in 2020 and 11 games in 2021. Outstanding players, but they have graduated, and now it is time for others to step up. And on Tuesday night, Paris fans could see some evidence of players stepping up to the next generation of Paris football.
Paris “won” both junior high and senior high scrimmages over Magazine. But most importantly, it did not appear that either team suffered any injuries that will impact the starts to their respective seasons. After the game, Coach Weaver, speaking of his team’s performance in the scrimmage, said, “I felt like we played pretty solid ball as a whole. Defense did a good job of controlling the line of scrimmage and the secondary swarmed to the ball and tackled well. Offense was very vanilla (very basic play calling) but we moved the ball consistently. We saw plenty on film that we need to improve on and to get ready for our season opener.”
Paris will open the season next Friday night in Scott County when the Eagles travel to Waldron. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.
Watch for the Waldron pregame special in the RNN Logan County weekly newspaper next week.
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