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By Jed Blackwell
Sports Editor
Before taking the job as head coach at Wren High School six years ago, Mickey Moss had never considered beginning his team’s football season a week early.
Moss, now the head coach at Blacksburg, has begun with a Week Zero game every year since.
He doesn’t want to do it again.
Moss and the Wildcats travel to Walhalla on August 21, a full week before most teams in the state begin play. While Dorman and Spartanburg will face off in a Week Zero contest, all other local teams will wait until the following week to begin. Most will still be working the kinks out in jamboree action while Blacksburg is playing a game that counts.
“It’s just an extra week of pressure,” Moss said of the situation. “I’d rather start with everybody else. I’d love to have that extra week of preparation.”
The Week Zero games are a relatively new phenomenon, born out of a scheduling necessity. When teams can’t find a 10th (or 11th, for 4A) game to round out their schedule due to prior conflicts, the South Carolina High School League allows them to schedule a game in the early week against another team looking for a game. Then, in the regular season, each team will have a bye to correspond with the hole in its’ schedule that caused the team to need the Week Zero game.
The end result is a full schedule. The preparations, though, can take their toll, especially in the first few weeks of practice.
“It’s not any fun,” Moss said. “It definitely puts you in a higher gear. You just get as much as you can done.”
Moss said this week was especially tough, as teachers return to school and practices are cut back to once a day. The weather can also cause problems, as temperatures soared to 100 degrees on Monday.
“We’re fighting the clock, and we’re fighting the heat, and it wears you out,” Moss said. “We just have to take every day as it comes.”
Moss said the schedule even impacted preparations for scrimmages and jamborees.
“We just have to go out and try to do what we do,” Moss said. “We can’t be too worried about what somebody else is doing, because there are so many fundamental things we need to get better at. The good thing is that we can take it a step at a time and build toward a strong region start.”
Spartanburg head coach Freddie Brown is fighting the same battle, but his opening game is with arch-rival Dorman. It’s a situation that Brown isn’t exactly fond of.
“I wouldn’t recommend it to most folks,” Brown said with a laugh. “A Week Zero game against your arch rival is tough, especially when the rival is Dorman.”
Brown said scheduling could be a nightmare with a Week Zero game looming.
“School continues to move back, football continues to move forward, and we don’t have a chance to bring the kids in any earlier,” he said. “Fortunately, we have a strong summer program that carries over. It’s tough to prepare that quickly, but I think our kids are up to the challenge.
Brown said that the Week Zero date with Dorman was especially important to his players.
“These guys see each other everywhere,” Brown said. The lines between District 6 and District 7 get a little blurred, people move in and move out, and you may wind up playing against somebody you went to elementary or middle school with, or soomebody you’ve layed beside before. It’s a good rivalry, and it gets the kids acked up.”
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