MARSHALL COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — Two of Sand Mountain’s football programs with rich football traditions are the Guntersville Wildcats and Boaz Pirates.
Both teams are gearing up for what they hope will be a strong 2025 season.
Boaz High School
At Boaz, the Pirates made a big hire this offseason, nabbing Luke Pruitt from Pisgah. Pruitt brings a winning resume to a program that has historically had a lot of success.
He says that former Boaz coach Jeremy Sullivan left the program in great shape, which will help kickstart success in his time at Boaz.
“Coach Sullivan did a great job, and the staff that we have there is going to be some continuity with that,” Pruitt said. “But, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day, we’ve got to be able to run the football and stop the run to be successful and take care of the football, but yes, you are going to see a lot, some of the same concepts that you’ve seen in the past.”
The Pirates had a lot of talent graduate from a year ago, but also have some experience returning.
Pruitt will start freshman Beau Bennett at quarterback, who he says has had a great offseason.
“He’s done really good, you know, he’s still a freshman and he’s going to have freshman mistakes through the year but he’s done a really good job with his protections and that’s something,” Pruitt said. “Throwing the ball where it needs to go, being on time, that’s stuff that we can work on, and some of the other stuff will come with him getting varsity experience.”
Boaz will take on Madison County to start the season.
Guntersville High School
Over at Guntersville, Coach Lance Reese returns for year 16 as the Wildcats’ head coach. The team went 9-1 in the regular season before getting bounced in the first round by Leeds.
While the team will have to replace a lot of talent from a year ago, the players say the expectation is still to win.
“Big, big class graduated, 18 seniors. Great, great athletes. We got a lot of guys that was freshmen last year, sophomores coming up that are going to have to step up and play, and I think that’s going to be really big for us cause someones got to fill the shoes,” Lenoir said. “We aren’t looking to rebuild, we are just reloading, so we got to have step up for us, and I think we have this summer.”
Heading into the season, Reese says the team isn’t focused on anyone on the schedule, just themselves.
“We believe if we play our best, we’ve got a chance to win and as I mentioned we’ve gone 9-1 the last three seasons, the one loss is because we didn’t feel like we played to the best of our ability, looking at the teams in our region, anytime we go out there and we’re not prepared we got a great chance to lose cause they are playing their best,” Reese said. “We really are focused on not one particular team but on us to try and play to the best of our ability.”
Guntersville will host Southside Gadsden to start the season.
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