Preseason is over; time to lace’em up for real

Jason Peevyhouse is the Sports Editor of the State Gazette.

By the time you’re reading this in the weekend edition of the State Gazette, the high school football preseason for 2024 will have finally and officially come to a close.

Over the next 11 or so weeks, players, coaches, fans, and the media will take the regular season journey up and down the roads on Friday nights (and one Thursday night in late October) as the teams look to secure a high enough finish to secure even more games and a chance to ride that road to the TSSAA State Championship Game in their respective class.

This past summer has been one of change for the teams, thanks to heavy graduation hitting both the Dyer County and Dyersburg rosters.

We here at the State Gazette are going through our own change since being bought by Paxton Media earlier this summer.

Our print deadlines, specifically Friday night during football season, is one of the biggest changes when regarding sports.

Due to our deadlines now being moved to earlier in the day on Friday, we will no longer have high school football games from Friday night football games featured in Saturday’s newspaper. However, stories will be available online within hours of the games’ conclusion - depending on multiple factors like the location of the games, etc.

Games will also be featured in Tuesday’s print edition.

As someone who tries to see positives in change, this does allow our sports staff to expand the football coverage now that a Friday night deadline is no longer causing our reporters to rush to conclude a story before a certain time at night on a short turnaround.

This also allows our sports section to feature different types of sports and coverage in our weekend edition including high school volleyball, golf, girls soccer, cross country, and a variety of middle school sports.

So, have faith in our staff here at the State Gazette and I feel you will be pleased with the product we will continue to put out.

All that being said, the biggest game of the week locally is in just six short days over at Newbern.

This will be the first time I get to be on the sidelines at Dyer County High School when the Trojans visit the Choctaws, having been in the stands during the game at Newbern two years ago.

I feel by the time we read this following the jamboree at Dyersburg on Friday night we may know a bit more about how things will shake out on the natural surface at DCHS.

Either way, the countdown to Week 1 is in single digits and it’s almost time for the games to count.