RON SEIBEL: It’s a season of change in Albany

Monday was a busy day at the Dougherty County School District athletics office at Hugh Mills Stadium.

Incoming county athletics director Lea Henry and outgoing AD Johnny Seabrooks had plenty of paperwork to work through, squaring away things as the school year nears its beginning. Earlier in the day, they brought together the district’s fall sports coaches together to cover the bases as the start of formal practices loom.

It was also a day for a new-to-town sports writer to start putting faces with names.

In 11 years at the Macon Telegraph and five years previous to that at the Northwest Florida Daily News, I never had the opportunity to cover a sporting event in Albany. Sure, Macon sent plenty of track and field athletes to Hugh Mills for the GHSA and GISA track and field finals, and the late Bruce Stewart recruited the Albany area heavily during his days as the men’s basketball head coach at what is now Northwest Florida State College. But other than a couple of drives around the periphery of Albany on the Liberty Bypass, I had not even ventured into the city.

That all changed this month. Some changes in Macon, combined with a quality sales job performed by current Telegraph and former Herald sports editor Daniel Shirley, led to conversations with Herald editor Jim Hendricks. We hit it off, and Monday marked my first day as the Herald’s sports editor.

It’s never easy to make a move in the sports media industry during the football season. It’s a time where people, especially in the South, can’t get enough of the game, be it at the high school, college or pro levels. Make a move in July or August, and it’s going to be a case of hitting the ground at a full sprint.

There’s definitely no shortage of story lines in Southwest Georgia heading into the 2017 football season.

In Dougherty County, the effects of Albany High’s closure are still shaking out. Monroe is down to an eight-game schedule, while all three of the remaining schools are still feeling out how the former Albany student-athletes will work into their new environments. Consolidation is never easy, and the district’s teachers, coaches and administrators will be dealing with a lot once classes start up next week.

Despite playing in arguably the most competitive football region in the GHSA in Region 1-6A, a region that includes 2016 Class 6A champion Valdosta and semifinalist Northside-Warner Robins, there’s a lot of people looking at what Lee County might be able to do this season. Five Lee County players have Division I commitments lined up, including two to Power Five conferences, a number that ranks among the state’s best. The Trojans open the season for the second straight year Aug. 17 at Mercer’s Five Star Stadium in the Corky Kell Classic, taking on Class 4A semifinalist Mary Persons.

Worth County had a solid go of things last year, finishing second in its region and going to the second round of the Class 3A playoffs. And Southwest Georgia’s single-A programs are gearing up, too, with Pelham posting the area’s top power rating in Class 1A last fall.

GISA and GICAA programs are also part of the Southwest Georgia scene, with Deerfield-Windsor continuing to rank among the top programs in the GISA. With rules against cross-association play loosening thanks to legislative pressure, I’d love to see Deerfield-Windsor add one or two of its former Macon GISA rivals to the schedule, perhaps bringing a Greg Moore-coached or Mark Farriba-coached team to Albany one of these days.

Our high school coverage focus will be on Dougherty and the immediate surrounding counties, but we also will keep an eye on what is happening across Southwest Georgia. Coaches and statisticians, we will need your assistance in keeping up with what is going on as we try to present as thorough of a coverage package as possible across all high school sports.

At the collegiate level, we will keep an eye on the changes at Albany State as Gabe Giardina takes over the Rams’ football program. Valdosta State visits Sept. 2, the opening of a five-game home slate.

The bigger schools will find their way into The Herald’s sports pages, as well, but before accusations of being a Bulldogs, Yellow Jackets, Seminoles, Gators, Tigers or Crimson Tide partisan are thrown, rest assured that I am agnostic when it comes to SEC and ACC partisanship. That’s what happens when you attend a mid-major in the Midwest; you keep an open mind when it comes to the big boys.

So, as we get things started here, let’s have some fun seeing how things shake out this fall. If you have any story ideas or just want to put a bug in my ear, feel free to contact me through email ([email protected]), phone (229-888-9306) or on Twitter (@RonSeibel). This is going to be a group effort, and everyone in Albany and Southwest Georgia is part of the group.