By Angie Ledbetter

The South Panola Tiger football team will switch up their schedule this year, which so far only has three home games, announced fourth-year head coach  Lance Pogue.

The Tigers will meet up with south Georgia’s 5A Colquitt County High School Packers in Moultrie on Saturday, August 28.

The game will be played at 12:45 p.m. EST. Television information will be released at a later date.

The Packers finished th 2009 season with an 11-3 overall, 5-2 league record. Their season ended in the semifinals to the Camden County Wildcats 19-10 on December 4.

The Tigers were scheduled to play Northwest Rankin in that spot, but Northwest Rankin opted out to play DeSoto Central.

“Northwest Rankin had the opportunity to play Desoto Central and I agreed to let them because Coach David Coates is a friend of mine,” Pogue said. “So that gave us an open date the last week of August and the word got out. We had two or three opportunities and then this one came about.”

Pogue said Colquitt is a great program and a great football team. Rush Propst is the three-year head coach, and used to head coach at Hoover (Ala.) High School.

While Propst was at Hoover for nine years, he won 110 games and five state championships. He was hired at Colquitt on January 30, 2008.

“It’s an opportunity for us and I think it will be a great experience for our players,” Pogue said. “They’ll get to do something they’ve never done before. It will probably be one of the biggest games in the country that weekend.”

With the game on Saturday, Pogue is hoping many of the fans will take the opportunity to travel and watch the game.

“South Georgia is a nice area and it’s not going to be a bad drive,” he said.

The team will travel down on Friday, spend the night, play the game on Saturday and return home after the game.

“We will play Memphis University School the following week,” Pogue said.

Because of rain and a bad field last year, the game with Horn Lake was played at South Panola. This year it was supposed to be a South Panola home game but has been switched to Horn Lake. If that changes, Pogue will announce it later. There may be a change with the first game of the season at Petal, also, Pogue said, but nothing has been settled.

In preparation for the beginning of spring training, the team has been in the weight room the past few months.

“We’re seeing significant and positive strides,” Pogue said.

He reports many of the players are improving their strength level and some are gaining some solid weight. He said they are also working on speed and conditioning.

“We’re pushing that all the way to spring break,” he said. “Hopefully after spring break, we’ll have some better weather than what we’ve had. We’re going to start to get outside a little bit more and work our way up to spring practice which will start around mid-April.”

South Panola will participate in the spring jamboree at Louisville on Friday, May 14. They will play Louisville and West Point.