By Jason Avery
News-Times Staff
Football season has arrived.
On Monday, Union County schools held their first practices of the 2018 season.
Smackover and Strong held their first practices under new head coaches, while Junction City returned to the gridiron as a 2A school for the first time since 2015, and Parkers Chapel began its second year with Jacob Midyett at the helm.
At El Dorado, the Wildcats were scheduled to practice in the evening at Memorial Stadium.
For Junction City coach Steven Jones, Monday’s practice continued to build on what the Dragons accomplished during the summer.
“We like where we’re at,” Jones said, adding that he had 35 players out for the first day of practice. “We went to a lot of camps during the summer, so we were able to add on what we did over the summer.”
As far as the first day of practice is concerned, Jones said his team worked on the basics.
“We worked fundamentals on both sides of the ball,” Jones said.
For today’s practice, Jones said the Dragons will work on defense.
“We had more of an emphasis on offense (Monday), so we’ll work on defense tomorrow,” Jones said.
At Smackover, Brian Brown held his first practice as the Bucks’ head coach.
“It feels great,” Brown said. “I’m just looking forward to getting the season started.”
Brown said the Bucks worked on offense, defense and special teams while getting conditioning work done.
Brown also said that as the season gets closer, practices will get more specialized.
“We’ll specialize it more, but we’ll keep it at a regular pattern until school starts,” Brown said, adding that the Bucks had 32 players out for the first day with several players expected back from vacations.
Parkers Chapel held a morning practice to start the season.
“It means football is coming,” Midyett said of the first day of practice. “I think everybody is ready for football to start, and we’re one step closer to getting the season started.”
The Trojans also worked on all three phases of the game.
“We touched on offense, defense and special teams,” Midyett said. “That’s probably how we’re going to do it and get everything reinstalled.”
Midyett said he had roughly 22 to 23 players out for the first day, but was missing a couple of players due to illness.
Including junior high players, Midyett said he had 50 players total.
The lone team to practice in the afternoon was Strong with coach Sirl Wright conducting his first practice as the