MADISON COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — As we inch closer to kick-off, it’s time to take a look at two rivals from Madison County for our Football Friday Countdown series.
We start with the Hazel Green Trojans, who are coming off a 3-7 season in Fred Farrier’s first year as head coach.
Farrier says to expect a lot of improvement from the Trojans this offseason.
“There’s a lot of good things going on at Hazel Green right now. You know going into year two this team has worked really hard to kind of take on the mentality and the mindset that the coaching staff has tried to put in place,” Farrier said. “We’ve had a full offseason starting on January 27. We’ve been in there with the strength coach, 7-on-7, meetings, just getting these guys up to speed and getting them more tuned into what we want to do this year.”
The Trojans will return a lot of experience on both sides of the ball. Farrier says the players are more bought into what his staff is trying to do.
“We’ve got more buy-in from our parents, we’ve got more buy-in from our players, you know, anytime you go through a change, you know, in coaching staff, mindset, mentality, the culture, changing the culture, all those things you hear coaches talk about,” Farrier said. “There’s always some resistance in the beginning, so year 2 has been significantly less amount of resistance to the change.”
The Trojans are getting ready to debut a new turf field, but they’ll have to play their first three games on the road. They’ll open their home slate against the Buckhorn Bucks in the Cotton Classic.
The Bucks are welcoming in David Green for his first season as head coach after Matt Patterson left following last season. Green says he has hit the ground running as he tries to establish his culture in the program.
“Just getting to know the kids, building relationships with them,” Green said. “It’s one of the big things that we’ve kind of focused on is really kind of developing those and making sure they are learning the new defense, learning the new offense, and they’ve done a really good job of that.”
Green is setting high expectations for the program.
“There’s a lot you know the Cotton Classic is a big one, we are excited about that but we don’t want to look ahead, we are focused solely on getting ready to play Decatur, we want to go 1-0 focus on that, we want to make the playoffs, we’d love to host a playoff game,” Green said. “Win the region, so that’s kind of the goals we have, the things that we are trying to establish, and really look forward to doing.”
Green will be tasked with winning the program’s first playoff game in 20 years. The Bucks kick off the season against Decatur on Aug. 22.
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