Football season not that far

It may be tough to think about football when it is 105 degrees outside, but in case you have not checked the calendar, we are less than 40 days away from the start of the high school football season.

Ironwood Ridge is the first of the area teams to take the field, starting a week early with a showdown in the Phoenix area against Liberty High School on August 22.

The next week the rest of the teams start their seasons. Marana, Mountain View and CDO play Thursday night, while Catalina Foothills and Pusch Ridge open their seasons Friday night. Ironwood Ridge also plays again Friday night.

We are planning some big things for our high school sports coverage this fall and readers from the Marana Weekly News and Foothills News know I love football. My editor Thelma Grimes is also a huge football fan, so she is on board with providing a lot of coverage.

Fear not, the other fall sports will also get their fair share of coverage.

For those who are unfamiliar with me, I have been covering the Marana beat for nearly eight years and Foothills for almost as long. I am excited to add the three Oro Valley teams to my beat.

All told I have been coaching or covering high school football in this town since 1999. I coached four years at Cholla High School and began working in the media at that same time. In addition to prep sports I have been covering University of Arizona sports in print, on the net and on radio. I did the Wildcat pre and post game shows on 1290 for nine years and continued that role on 1490 last year.

We are already planning our football preview and the plan is to do expanded coverage each week on the website. In addition to game stories and player features, we’ll keep you up to date on that week’s games and as the season progresses, how the postseason chances of each team are fairing.

As we lead into the season we’ll not only previewing each team, but also taking an in-depth look at each team’s schedules, looking for those winnable games, rough patches and sneaky opponents.

If you can’t tell I love football and hope that love comes through my writing. And of course, I’d love to hear from you. Is there a player who needs coverage? Is there a story within the story that needs to be told? Let me know. No one knows more about the teams than their fans and the parents of the players.

Football season is approaching and we’re getting ready, are you?

First up in our high school coverage will be re-caps of last season for each fall team, at each school.