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Old rivals, Chambers Academy and Springwood School, met for a seven v seven scrimmage at the Rebel’s field. The preseason game allowed both teams to evaluate talent as their season openers near. 

Chambers, while coming off a 2A AISA championship last season, lost a group of seniors and with the reshuffling of the conference has moved up to 3A. 

“We kind of knew what we had coming back from last year, we graduated eight seniors,” said Jason Allen, Chambers Academy head coach. But we’ve had a really good summer this summer, so far. Our kids have been working hard, our rosters are pretty set heading into fall practice Monday.”

The Quarterback question for the Rebels seemed to be answered during the scrimmage, with Landon Hand playing the majority, leading the Rebels. Hand connected with Jacob Norgard for three TDs and Cameron Gooden for two. 

“Hand has kind of taken that bull by the horns. He’s done a great job this summer and really stepped up. He’s a junior, he’s been in our program for four or five or six years now,” said Allen. “He’s kind of got that Moxie we’re looking for at the quarterback position, to be able to make plays. He’s not the biggest guy in the world, but he’s tough and he knows our system.”

For Springwood, who will continue playing 8-man football, the 7-on-7 allowed the players to get crucial practice time against some new faces. 

“This game helped us a lot…we’re so small playing eight-man football that we have a hard time practicing each other and getting a whole lot out of it so we were able to coach our guys up and see live action and get a real good football team,” said Joey Burch, head coach for Springwood.

The Springwood roster is still malleable. Burch said that they were missing five players on Monday, due to summer schedules, that will compete for starting positions. The region champs hope to repeat and get back to the state title game for the third year in a row. 

Burch said he was proud of how all of the Wildcats played. The Springwood captains proved the title. CJ Johnson made some key plays and an interception. At wide receiver, Gregory Johnson III made several big catches. Burch was also impressed with 8th grader Jax Cheeny.

“Russell Lauderdale did a great job down there on the O-Line going to get some guys. Carter Fuller [did well]. All the guys really learned a lot…Like I said this was very beneficial for us,” said Burch.

“Our guys feel good about themselves because they get to hold their own against the 11-man defending state [champions]…so it’s a win-win for us and we got out of here with nobody injured so our quarterback got better, receivers got better, defensively [we got better], it really really helped us a lot,” said Burch.

“Coach Burch and I are friends and we didn’t want it to be a score-type thing…we just wanted to use each other to get better. And I thought it was a good productive day and we got to see some things we were good at and see some things we need to work on,” Allan said. 

The schools will continue to gear up during camps. Springwood will debut against Southern Christian on August 23, who went 2-7 last year. Chambers will open with Starkville Academy, who finished 9-3 last season, winning its region in Mississippi, on August 23.