Football Forecast

A Sneak Peak into the Maclay Preseason Football

Photo by Blair Bayliss/Maclay Andalusian

Coming off the 2022-2023 season, the Maclay football team has high hopes for head coach Jason Cauley’s second season at Maclay. Over the summer, the team strived to complete conditioning workouts, execute intense practices and perform scrimmages. The players, including Cauley, believe this will be one of the best seasons yet.

“All throughout the summer we’ve been working out Monday through Thursday,” Cauley said. “The linemen workout after strength and conditioning [training] on Mondays and Wednesdays [which has significantly helped build our athletes strength].”

The training will prepare the football team for any obstacles and interferences in tough games throughout the season. Along with the whole team’s training, each position has its own strength conditioning sets on certain days. In addition to the challenging summer workouts, the team took a trip to Alabama in June to play games against other teams and to work together.

“We are going on a trip to Alabama this week, [and it’s] a team camp,” Cauley said. “This will be the first time that we work as a complete team.”

After losing nine seniors this past year, the Maclay football hopes to fill its shoes with the rising 2024 senior class. The upcoming seniors can all agree that the team has done a terrific job at bonding. With the heavy loss of seniors from last year, the upcoming seniors are going to have to take charge in bringing the team together as one. The class includes seniors linebacker/running back Nathan Lillie and linebacker Brinkley Snow. While the team has been preparing all summer, they still have things to work on and perfect for the season.

“The record doesn't really show how you perform,” Lillie said. “As long as we play and have a respectful team, we will be satisfied.”

Since the Maclay varsity football team will kick off their season on Friday, Aug. 18 at seven pm, against Chipley High School, Lillie and Snow have great expectations for this season. With the first Maclay home game against Deerfield-Windsor coming up on Aug. 25 at 7:30 pm, the team is working on having good personal skills like staying positive, lifting each other up and learning from the past to improve their work.

“Encouraging others and making sure everyones on top of things and getting hype for games [is one of our biggest hopes for this season],” Snow said.

The team's compatibility on and off the field has been key to their success. Although many talented players graduated in the 2023 class, the upcoming seniors are more than ready to take responsibility and lead the rest of the team.

“Everybody [is aiming] for one goal [which is to] have a winning season and make the playoffs,” Cauley said. “There are no selfish players [and] they just all want to see each other succeed.”