Wilson and Lake City could not put away the incident that linked them until Friday morning, when high school football practice kicked off, and the 2009 season officially began.
The two teams were banned from postseason play in 2008 after a Week One brawl after their game. In was painful to both teams as the Tigers did not get a chance to defend their state title, and Lake City's undefeated region slate came without a trophy.
But both teams have high hopes for '09, and both teams know they have something to prove.
"This is an opportunity to get that season back," said Wilson coach Darryl Page. "We feel like we didn't play our best ball last year, we weren't 100%. Now we hope to have some consistency and go contend in our region and hopefully make the playoffs."
"We were very young last year, a lot of sophomores and juniors" Lake City coach Justin Gentry said. "Once the ordeal we had went down last year, in the back of everybody's mind we knew we were building for the next year."
The Panthers kicked off practice Friday afternoon with mostly their entire team intact from 2008. The only departing senior starters were DL Donquille McElveen, DB Stevenson Gaston and WR Desmond Haygood. The focal point for this year's team will be a huge offensive line, that returns all their starters.
Wilson lost a few more key players, but still returns many players that saw action from the 2007 state championship game. The leader on offense is undoubtedly Maliek McCall. As a sophomore quarterback, he played at least a half in every game two years ago. Now he'll be asked to play the whole game, every game.
Both teams return many talented players, but Lake City and Wilson are just excited to see how far that talent can go after being forced to sit in the postseason of '08.
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