High School football practice starts this Friday morning at Midnight on many of our area campuses and as we have been saying in the off-season, watch out for Dudley and Page.
We know that Dudley has talent with many of their big offensive and defensive linemen returning from last year’s State Championship squad. The very big plus for the Panthers will be the return of senior quarterback Ricky Lewis Jr. Lewis is the young man that took Dudley to the promised land last season and he should be getting better with that title game experience under his belt.
The title game was when Lewis really began to start throwing the ball with major success. Everyone knew that Lewis could run the ball, he used to be a runningback and he can run it well, as typified by his ground success in Dudley’s victory at Oxford Webb in the East Regional title game.
Dudley will be practicing at midnight this Thursday/Friday and so will Grimsley. Page will not do the midnight madness, they will go at in the mornings, on a regular basis, from 8-10:30am, to get a break from the heat of most afternoons over the next couple of weeks. With the Midnight Madness as it is called, they start the seaon by blowing the whistle at the stroke of 12 midnight to signify the beginning of another HS football campaign.
Page will be Very Good this year and we have talked much about their fine QB Will Newman who could be committing to Deleware in the next couple of weeks. Newman is a pure passer and he led the Pirates to a 24-23 win over Grismley last season. Newman along with Lewis will be the top two quarterbacks in the county and also in the area.
We were talking in detail about Will Newman at GREENSBOROSports.com back in 2007 and we also found a Page Pirate kicker that might just be the best all-around kicker in the state and also one of the tops in the country. From 2007:
Page’s kicker Matt Milisor, with his field goals, extra points, and his booming kickoffs, the colleges are going be calling on this junior. Newman and Milisor are both just juniors.
Now Newman and Milisor are both seniors and they are no longer the hunters, they are now the hunted. By the colleges and by the opposition. Milisor was the top kicker in the Metro 4-A Conference as a junior and he should only be improved as a senior.
Keep and eye and ear on Newman and Milisor in 2008 and we will have more on the other area teams after the first week of practice and we will use our resources from NC Preps and their 2008 Yearbook.
Matt is a really good kicker. My son works out with him on Sundays and he’s the best of the bunch, as far as kicking. I’ve timed his punts for hang time and seen his kickoffs. One particular ACC team has noticed him when they came to evaluate my son. Liked the fact he can punt and kick.
I saw in today’s News and Record where one of the kids from Ragsdale, I believe it is, has signed with and ACC school, Duke if the memory chip is working correctly today.
Joey Finison, 6’4 around 250 pounds, an offensive linemen that is psrt of what should be a conference championship contending team for the Ragsdale Tigers this season.
Ragsdale will have to find a suitable replacement for QB Matt Heavner who was more than adequate in his junior and senior years in Jamestown and especially his senior season.
If the quarterback spot gets set, then Ragsdale will contend again, along with Southeast Guilford, for the Mid-Piedmont 3-A Conference title.
Eastern Randolph lost their top QB to the new school in Randolph County, Providence Grove, and their first-year head coach, Todd Shuping.
Shuping is a good one and he will have his new team in contention quickly, but I believe that PG will be a 2-A school starting out.
Joey has some good offers (which I will not speculate on) but I did not realize he had committed to a school. My son plays with him and was unaware that h committed. Nothing on the Duke website yet.
The Duke website has been updated this am and lists Joey Fenison of Ragsdale as a commitment. Congratulations to Joey! Well deserved. Great person and a great student. He worked hard for this.
Andy,
It looks like you have been doing your homework. Southeast High School is either going to be good or great. They will be returning a lot of speed this year. Venable’s knack for making the big hit will be missed, but the defense still has a chance to be a solid unit. Southeast’s kicking game has to be the best in the conference. The PK/P was probably the best athlete on the field for them last year. On the offensive side of the ball, there’s plenty of room for improvement from last year. If the line can gel, expect total yardage numbers similar to SEH of two years ago.
I believe Terrance Topps was the Southeast Guilford kicker/punter last year and I remember games where he completed passes to Venable and to Brian Webb from the kicker’s position.
From what I’ve been hearing, Topps is supposed to be the SEG Falcon quarterback this season.
I hope Tavon Clark at SEG has a good year. One of the fastest kids I’ve ever seen.
Ragsdale returns 9 starters on defense that last year was really good.
We know ALL the usual suspects will be good-Northeast-new running back transferred in and Pursley always wins-Dudley-better than last year’s state champs-Grimsley-solid with Marc at the head-Ragsdale-Tommy’s got a program-Southeast-old school Fritz makes ’em work-Page-Newman is there. Who will be the surprise team?
Terrance Topps is the Falcon quarterback and he definitely has some passing ability. The Falcons ran some sort of fake from the kicking game almost twice a game from the 3rd game of the season on. The majority of those fakes were passes. Topps is still doing all the kicking, so opposing teams will have to spend some time going over special teams before facing the Falcons. Tavon Clark ended last year getting alot of reps in the Falcon backfield. He definitely has the speed to make a big impact this year. Fritz will definitely RUN the ball.