MADISON COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — As we inch closer to kickoff, let’s visit with two Madison County teams gearing up for their 2025 season.
Michael Harper enters year two for the New Hope Indians, who are coming off a 3-7 season in his first season as coach.
Harper says he feels more comfortable with the community and the program as he heads into this season. He feels this will help the program be more successful.
“I’m not just drinking through a fire hose so to speak, and then two, just the amount of work that the guys have put in in the offseason, now we’ve got multiple sport athletes like any school our size, and we’ve got a lot of them,” Harper said. “But the guys that were with us in the offseason worked very, very hard.”
Last season, the Indians put up great offensive numbers at times, including scoring 71 and 69 points in the first two games of the year. Harper says he hopes for continued success on the offensive side of the ball with a few tweaks to help his defense.
“We have some guys that are one back in the system, so they’ll actually have two years in the system, and then we’ve got, like I said last year, we’ve got some good athletes, we’ve got some talented athletes on that side of the ball,” Harper said. “It may look a little bit different, though. We are likely not going to play as fast-paced as we did last year, just because we want to help our defense out a little more.”
Harper and the Indians will kick off the season against Ohatchee on August 22.
The Madison County Tigers are looking to improve on a 2-8 season in Chris Hancock’s first year.
Hancock says his team has put in a lot of work this offseason to get better.
“They’ve really, in the second year here, we’ve had a chance to really do some good things in the offseason in the spring and now we are in the summer and just seeing these guys grow and not only become good football players, but you know they become good men so great team chemistry,” Hancock said. “We’ve got a great group, got a group of seniors right now that have really stepped up and shown us that they are really hungry, that they really want to be successful.”
Hancock says the biggest improvement he’s seen from his team from a year ago is their strength.
“Their work ethic has been has improved everyday and just seeing how they grow together. Team chemistry, their efforts that have been put together school work to being on the field on time to being able to buy in to what are coaches are telling them having continuity and so forth,” Hancock said. “The honeymoon is over, we’re looking forward to coming in and getting ready for the second year.’”
Madison County will kick of the season against Boaz on Aug. 22.
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