High school football is finally here. 

Week 1 of the sport got started on Friday for some of the area academies and Starkville Academy and Oak Hill each got their seasons underway with victories.

 

Starkville Academy 14, Chambers Academy (Alabama) 13

The Volunteers long bus ride back from eastern Alabama was a happy one after they battled back and narrowly took down Chambers Academy, the reigning AISA 2A champions, 14-13.

The Volunteers trailed 13-0 at halftime and got a rushing touchdown from Lawson Mullins in the third quarter to spark the comeback, and Brantley Berkery put SA on top with a rushing score of his own. Kicker Nathan Miller drilled both PATs, the second one from extra yardage due to a penalty on the Vols, to give SA a 14-13 lead. 

With under two minutes left in the game, the Falcons started a drive from the Vols’ 33-yard line and set up to kick a 25-yard field goal with five seconds left to play. The Vols got a big push from its defensive front to affect the kicker and his game-winning try sailed short and wide right. 

“It was a good game,” head coach Chase Nicholson said. “Happy to get out of there with a win against a tough opponent; a lot of good things happened. At the end of the day, our defense played really well – minus three drives – I think they played really well and they gave us a chance. Our offense took advantage of a short field and different big plays to get points and the special team’s battle really helped us out. They obviously missed an extra point and a field goal at the end, and we made an extra point. We flipped the field a couple of times, so it was just a complete game across the board in all three phases, but it goes down to how hard our guys played.

“Even though they were down 13-0 at the half, they came back out ready to go and played like they were winning, like they had something to play for. (It was a) great  to be part of it and really excited about where we’re going from here.”

The Vols (1-0) will have their first home game of the season Sept. 5 when Winston Academy comes to town.   

 

Oak Hill Academy 43, Manchester Academy 0

The Raiders started the 2025 season with a bang.

Chantz Harris took the game’s opening kickoff to the house for six points and added another scoring catch to help Oak Hill shutout Manchester Academy 43-0. 

The Raiders took a 36-0 cushion to halftime and added one more score in the third quarter. 

“Being the first game, I thought our guys hustled well and executed well. I thought we had a good night and had some young guys that did some good things.

“Offensively, we had two or three penalties that hurt us. Defensively, we let them get some yardage in drives, but at important times we were able to step up and get them out on downs,” Oak Hill head coach Tom Goode said. “They hit us with a fake punt one time, and luckily the defense stepped up and held them out.”

It was a solid opening win for the Raiders (1-0), but Goode said there’s still much to fix before their next outing at French Camp Academy on Friday.

“We have a lot of technique stuff to work out,” he said. “I thought our hustle and toughness was good, but even in a win like that we have a lot of small things to correct and to just get better each week.”