First games of 2025 season are Friday night
By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
The start of the high school football season has arrived and there’s no shortage of compelling matchups involving area teams.
And that’s just for the opening set of games.
The season openers are chock full of clashes that might fall into a can’t-miss category.
So here’s a glimpse at those games on Friday’s schedule, with kickoffs scheduled for 7:00 p.m.
Williams at Cummings
These city rivals are back in the same conference for the first time in decades. Because of scheduling maneuvering, they play each other in an opener.
On top of that, it will be their first meeting since 2022.
There have been numerous high-profile match-ups between these schools as they once were both state powers.
This one comes after both teams had strong seasons. Williams won the Central 3-A Conference. Cummings was the runner-up in the Mid-Carolina Conference.
Both teams are coached by alums. Patrick Stokes is at Williams, while Terrance Alford was tapped as interim coach in June at Cummings.
The series is tied 26-26 after Cummings won the past two meetings.
Eastern Randolph at Southern Alamance
Southern will begin the season with a different coach for the third year in a row (not to mention there was an acting coach for the 2023 postseason).
Now it’s alum Jona-than Hester’s turn atop the Patriots’ program.
His introduction as a head coach comes in the renewal of what was often a much-anticipated border battle between neighboring schools.
This will be the first game between the teams since 2019 and the third battle in a stretch of more than 15 years.
Eastern Randolph has been a state power. The Wildcats have lost a total of two regular-season games in the past four seasons combined.
An added bonus is that Eastern Randolph coach Burton Cates is a Graham resident and the winningest active high school football coach in the state.
Southern has won the past two meetings (2019, 2012), though Cates was at Lee County for the 2012 get-together before returning a few years later to Eastern Randolph.
This is the only Alamance County school on Eastern Randolph’s slate.
Eastern Guilford at Eastern Alamance
After what turned out as a one-year coaching break for John Kirby, the longtime Eastern Ala-mance coach will be back on the sidelines. He agreed to fill in on an interim basis. Kirby will be familiar with some members of the Eastern Guilford staff.
Danny McCawley became an Eastern Guilford assistant coach after leaving Eastern Alamance upon Kirby’s 2024 retirement.
His son, Keanan McCawley, a former Eastern Alamance player, is also on the Wildcats’ staff.
“Not so much (looking forward to it) right now because Kirby is back,” Danny McCawley said. “Kirby was good to me and we were close.”
These schools were conference rivals from 2009-16, but they haven’t met since then.
Even when Eastern Guilford has been separated from Alamance County schools in terms of conference set-ups, the Wildcats often play schools from the county.
They’ll begin the season with three straight teams from the county (Williams and Southeast Alamance in the second and third weeks).
Southeast Alamance at Orange
Former Southern Alamance coach Fritz Hessenthaler is back in a coaching capacity as he took over at Orange. This is his first coaching gig since a controversial firing on the day of the first round of the 2023 state playoffs.
Southeast and Orange will meet in a season opener for the third year in a row, splitting the first two clashes.
This will be the beginning of Southeast’s third year in existence.
Southeast didn’t face Southern in either of the past two years, so this is that coaching staff’s first matchup with Hessen-thaler and some of the now-former Southern assistant coaches who’ve joined him at Orange.
Yet Hessenthaler, then at Southern, and Southeast coach Tony Aguilar, then at Eastern Guilford, have been on opposite sidelines as head coaches in matchups with their previous schools. They met twice in conference play, with Southern defeating Eastern Guilford both times (2019, spring 2021).
Western Alamance at Northwest Guilford
Western faced Reidsville in its last four openers, marking five consecutive openers against a team from Rockingham County. So this is a different twist, but a challenging task.
Western last won an opener in the pandemic-adjusted spring 2021 season.
Northwest has won eight or more games in each of the past three seasons. The Vikings opened the past two seasons vs. Williams, with the visiting team winning each time.
Chatham Central at Graham
Before the recent realignments these teams were in the same conference. So they’ll keep the series going, but now in non-conference action.
Graham had one-win records the last two seasons, with both of those victories coming against Chatham Central.
The Red Devils won all four meetings across the past four seasons.
GET ALL THE LATEST LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS NEWS in this week’s (August 21) edition of The Alamance News: overviews of each of the seven county high schools, their schedules, interviews with coaches and key players. Now on sale throughout Alamance County.
