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.