During on-field spring practice sessions since April 24, the Greyhounds have lined up against only each other. But after a total of nine practices, Jones County finally gets to go against someone else and measure itself on Friday in its spring game against Perry.
“It’s gone well. We’re working some guys both ways, and we’re really excited to see how it all pans out against someone else on Friday night,” Greyhounds head coach Mike Chastain said. “It’s always good to go against someone else. You go against yourself all the time, and everybody knows what everybody is doing, especially when you are playing both ways. You definitely want to be able to test yourself against someone else.”
Friday should offer a degree of what to expect next fall from the Greyhounds, who by all accounts plan to have more players playing both offense and defense compared to past years. The visiting Panthers should provide a very defined barometer for the Greyhounds, whose losses from a season ago include multiple receivers and two linebackers.
Perry, which beat JCHS 54-21 last year, went on to win the GHSA Class AAAA title in 2023. The Panthers will be moving up a classification to AAAAA with Jones County moving to AAAA.
“Perry’s a really good football team.
They’ll be in AAAAA next year. Their enrollment is bigger than ours,” Chastain said. “They’ve got a lot of good players coming back. It’ll be a good test for us.
We’re young this year, and we’re looking forward to seeing how they do.”
In addition to the opponent, Friday’s game, set for 7:30 p.m., will also be as close to a game atmosphere that the Greyhounds have seen since the end of last season. Unlike this spring’s practices so far, Friday will have fans in the stands and the Marching Greyhounds on the scene as well, making it as close to a game environment as possible.
Friday’s scrimmage will lead into summer workouts that will set up the preseason run-up the regular season.
JCHS scrimmages Aug. 9 at Mary Persons and opens the season Aug. 16 against Veterans.
