By Joe Joe Wright

joejoe.wright@cordeledispatch.com

When Sam Cooke wrote the song “Wonderful World”, he said he didn’t know much about history and biology. He also said he didn’t know what a slide rule was for.

Well I don’t know jack squat about brain surgery! But I do know someone that does. I don’t know very much about computers I am still learning but I nick named my wife Google so all I have to do is ask her. I also don’t know very much about making a casserole or doing calculus.

So what good am I? Well I do know football and baseball and this fall we are in for a treat around here. I will start up North in Dooly County. Jimmy Hughes has some good players returning and they will be a little older. Last Year he started four freshmen. He is going to have a little size on his team as well. The line will be fairly new, so there is some work there to be done and his schedule is brutal. The Bobcats play a lot of schools much bigger than they are early in the season and Crisp and Americus are two of them. However, if the Hughes “cats” can stay healthy in the first five weeks look out. They will have gained some very healthy experience early on and I can see them making a deep run in the Playoffs.

Though Fullington lost some very good players, they have several more underclassmen coming up. Fullington has one problem half of their season they play teams from AAA classification so yeah they are going to lose some games but like Dooly they gain some valuable experience. I see another playoff run for Trojans.

Over in Wilcox they are rebuilding and also playing in arguably the toughest region in the state. Their region and Dooly’s region flip-flops as the toughest region fairly regular. Wilcox always has some very fine athletes and Mark Ledford the coaches are able to get the most out of them so there should be plenty of excitement. Just not a lot of wins. I hope I am wrong. Every community goes through ups and downs it’s all apart of the process.

Crisp Academy with their severely depleted numbers in football has only been able to put 14 players on the field for the last 2 years. This year doesn’t promise to have many more than that. However, the Wildcats will be playing and 8 man football team schedule and by doing so they will more than triple the number of teams available in the state for them to play. In my mind this is a good thing at least for now while their numbers are low. As a result of this move the Cats should put on a show worth watching. I see a successful season in 2016.

Now we come to the Crisp County Cougars. Head Coach Shelton Felton and his staff have done very good job of getting and keeping these boys ready and motivated to be a football team. We have some high profile players in Brandon Dowdell and the “big Cat” Marquaviest Bryant, two seniors that should have great years. I will talk more about players later in the summer. The school board is redoing the weight room, KUDOS! School board. And we have a lot of big kids coming up from the Middle school. Crisp County also dropped down in classification to AAA ball in a region with Worth, Cook, Dougherty and Monroe. So consequently the Cougars have for the first time in a long time a favorable direction as a team. All that is well and good but they are still going to have get past Worth and 3 of the 4 mentioned teams are going to be better this year than last.

What will make the difference for the Cougars is our staff. We have some excellent coaches on the field that love and know what they are doing so lets make sure we keep them as long as we can. The biggest difference they are making is in the kid’s attitudes. Coach Felton is dead on top of the boys in making their grades. I watched him run a kid out of the lunch room during an extra curricular activity for not making the grades. I have watched him tell boys to pull up their pants. Anyone that knows me knows that I can’t stand sagging pants!!!! DISCIPLINE, RESPECT and self-respect that’s what Coach Felton and the others are teaching and the kids are responding. If we can just make sure that parents don’t get in the way. Those boys will become MEN and I mean real men in sense of civic and moral turpitude. I already see it in those seniors. 5 years ago a few kids would say yes sir, no sir yes maam no maam, and it was mostly fake when you heard it.

Now those seniors look you in the eye like a man and shake your hand and answer the question etc. and say   yes sir like it’s a second language. It makes a huge difference folks a huge difference!!!!!. I for one am very pleased with direction Shelton is taking our youth and as a community all of you should be too. Discipline, respect, self respect and a good game plan will equal wins on Friday night and not just on the ball field but off the field as well.  As Always ,I welcome your comments.