With the golf and baseball seasons having wrapped up statewide, teams in Georgia are now officially moving ahead toward next season.
In Jones County, things are no different. Following the first of the summer’s two dead weeks from May 30 to June 5, summer workouts can resume. The other dead week is July 4-10, with Aug. 1 being the first official practice date for fast-pitch softball, football, volleyball, cross country, cheerleading, one-act play and literary.
As the summer creeps toward that time, here are five storylines to look ahead to this fall.
Welcoming Warner Robins
The Greyhounds region has been tweaked for next season. While Jones County will remain in the same region and retain a majority of its opponents, it won’t be the only team in the region from the midstate. That’s because, while the region loses Stockbridge and Woodland, it’ll pick up Warner Robins to make up a seven-team region.
The Demons are obviously familiar to the Greyhounds, having frequently played them in numerous non-region matchups and at times, in the postseason. The one most familiar to those clashes for Greyhound fans has been in football, where the eventual state champion Demons have knocked the Greyhounds out of the playoffs in the past two seasons.
In a game that’ll likely determine the region champion, JCHS hosts Warner Robins Oct. 28 as the Greyhounds will be going for their fourth region title in a row.
There will be more to it than football, though.
Both the boys and girls basketball teams will bring squads to the region that typically make a charge into the state tournament, making a highly competitive boys basketball region even tougher. When you include the challenge that’ll also come in sports such as baseball and soccer, the level of competition should be raised across the board.
New AD at the helm
With Barry Veal taking over officially at Stratford Academy as Athletic Director as of June 1, someone else will be at the helm at that position for JCHS.
Shortly after the announcement that Veal would be bound for Stratford, he pointed to the point of pride regarding the fact that the athletic programs at JCHS were competitive across the board of all sports, and the goal will likely be to sustain and build off of that following this past year when four team sports reached at least the quarterfinal round.
All eyes on Ragins
All eyes will be on the speedy Zion Ragins this fall and beyond. Now a two-time state champion in the 100-meter run, the rising sophomore has drawn football offers from a who’s who of schools that includes Georgia and Oklahoma. In fact, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart helicoptered in within days of Georgia’s national title in January. As a testament to the overall talent in the Greyhounds program, 42 colleges, 39 being FBS programs, paid visits to the Greyhounds during spring practice.
Replacing star power
The nature of high school sports is that at some point, star student-athletes move on and someone else is tasked with stepping up. That should playout on the Greyhounds campus this fall.
In softball, Destin Howard and her overpowering pitching will have moved to Athens when this fall arrives to play for Georgia, so the task for the softball program to find new standouts to step up.
One of the state’s top passers the last two years, John Alan Richter, who was back in Gray last week to walk at graduation, has departed via early enrollment for Toledo. Given that, there’ll be a new triggerman for the Greyhounds offense, and that figures to be Judd Anderson, who continues to assimilate himself with the JCHS offense.
In girls soccer, the player who carried most of the scoring load for the Lady Hounds in recent years, Emily Brennaman, has also graduated, so new faces that would likely include Reagan Sorrell will be called upon to step up.
Newer sports seek even bigger step forward
While programs like football and basketball have a built-in history over time at Jones County, others are in their early stages by comparison.
Whereas the sports of gymnastics and volleyball qualify as newer sports, both will go toward the fall having taken large steps forward.
The Lady Greyhounds volleyball program will be going into its third season. A year ago, measures of success included their first match victory. With a group that’ll have as many as three years of experience, the move ahead will include striving for the next milestone of a first region victory.
In gymnastics, the Gym Hounds had their largest number of participants in the program’s 14-year history and this past year competed in the varsity, middle school and JV ranks. The past two years saw Kennedie Dyer qualify for area on the vault in 2022 and Chloe Clark doing so the previous year.
