RON SEIBEL: It’s football time in southwest Georgia

Is it just me, or did summer just go by way too fast?

For a lot of schools in Georgia, this is the week in which the 2018-19 school year begins. Way too early, and potentially way too hot if you’re a student or a teacher stuck in an older classroom where the air conditioning might not work correctly.

High school football players and coaches, on the other hand, might ask, “Summer break? What summer break?”

Between offseason workouts, camps and 7-on-7 competitions, high school football has become a nearly year-long endeavor. The GHSA mandates a one-week break around the July 4 holiday, but otherwise football programs go at it all summer.

That’s one of the reasons why Georgia high school football players are among the most sought-after by colleges. In the 247sports.com Class of 2019 composite rankings, six of the top 30 players nationally are from Georgia. No state can claim more.

Keeping in mind that summer-long effort, we started our high school football coverage earlier this year. We began our coverage in late June with a week-by-week look at the 2018 season. We followed up with a team-by-team look at what the Albany area has to offer this fall, wrapping up today with Lee County. If you missed any of those stories, they can be found at albanyherald.com.

Monday, we will begin to serve up the Herald’s traditional Dynamite Dozen package, but in a different way than in years past. In order to share more about each player chosen, we will reveal the dozen one player at a time, with a profile story on each player.

I hope you enjoy the opportunity to learn a bit more about the top players in the area. Some of you, however, might miss the poster page that we’ve run in previous years. Take the opportunity to read the series, then let me know what you think by emailing me at [email protected]. Your input will help guide how we approach the leadup to football seasons in the future.

Once football and fall sports like softball, volleyball and cross country arrive, we’ll do our best to tell the stories of the players and teams of the Albany area. We’ll be covering 17 football-playing high schools this fall, both in person and with the help of coaches and statisticians whose information is critical to our job of letting you know what’s going on. We can’t do what we do without the help of those who email us all the scoring plays and yardage totals after the game.

Speaking of contributions, do you like to write and/or shoot action photos? We’re looking for people to help us out as correspondents. Shoot me an email, and we’ll begin the conversation.

This begins my 24th season of covering high school football, my second as the Herald’s sports editor. With all of the new head coaches in the area and the excitement caused by Lee County’s championship run last year, this should be an interesting season coming up.

Contact sports editor Ron Seibel at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RonSeibel.