Summer officially ends today.
For some people.
In a manner of speaking.
It may not feel like it outside — with its temperatures in the 90s and its haze caused by fires in the region — but summer ends today for high school football players, as today is the first day high school football teams can hold full practices.
Don’t worry, football players: There’s relief in the forecast by the end of this week.
For us at The Columbian sports department, after two months of relative quiet, it’s time to get busy again.
And that’s not a bad a thing.
Frankly, the quiet was getting kind of boring.
Columbian preps reporter Paul Valencia will be hitting practices around Clark County in the next several days, along with photographers and videographers, capturing the stories as football teams prepare for the 2015 season.
It’s almost hard to image that the season will begin just a hair more than two weeks from now. Columbia River opens the 2015 season with a Thursday night game in Longview against R.A. Long on Sept. 3. Friday, Sept. 4, is the first Friday night of the football season.
As we have for the past several seasons, The Columbian will produce features on every 4A and 3A football team in Clark County, plus selected 2A and 1A teams.
Each season with these preview features, we try to find a different theme. This year, it’s a familiar theme: Players who had memorable performances in 2014 who are back in 2015.
But instead of our staff coming up with players to feature, or asking coaches about players on their own programs, this year we asked coaches from opposing programs about players on other teams.
In other words, these featured players are ones you should watch this season because they stood out to coaches from around the league.
Beginning Thursday, The Columbian will feature a player or players from a team in the 4A Greater St. Helens League. Players from the other six 4A GSHL teams will be featured over the following six days, before we move on to players from Clark County teams in the 3A GSHL.
And that will take us to Sunday, Aug. 30.
On that date, The Columbian will push preview capsules on all football teams in the 4A GSHL, 3A GSHL, 2A GSHLA and 1A Trico League, complete with photos, players to watch, returning players, season outlook and schedules as part of our big prep football preview.
That’s a change from past seasons, when we ran the capsule of each team on the same day as the feature on the team was published.
So if you want to find out about how every team in Southwest Washington is shaping up for the 2015 season, the Aug. 30 edition of The Columbian is for you. So mark that date.
After Aug. 30, we will complete our preview feature series with features on players from a selected 2A GSHL program, and then one on a selected 1A Trico program.
And that will take us right up to the season opener on Sept. 3.
So, are you ready for some football?
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at (360) 735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian, or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
