Conference realignment is bringing more southeast Arkansas flavor to Class 3A football this season.
McGehee and Dumas drop down from 4A this year to join Rison, Fordyce, Drew Central and Lake Village Lakeside in Conference 3A-8, which also includes east Arkansas teams Barton and Palestine-Wheatley.
Longtime McGehee coach Marcus Haddock said moving down a class doesn’t mean the competition gets any easier.
“Football’s football,” Haddock said. “It’s the same at both levels. It’s just different levels of what you see. So, it’s going to be still a challenge, because when you talk about the top-tier teams, it’s still going to be pretty much the same thing. We’ve got a big challenge ahead of us. We’re excited, though, to have probably more numbers than we’ve ever had.”
The Owls had a lot of success the last time they were in 3A.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
McGehee won conference championships in 2020 and 2021. The Owls reached the 3A state championship in 2020, finishing 12-1 after falling to Harding Academy. A year later, the Owls’ last in 3A before moving up, they went 13-1 and reached the semifinals.
Two years in 4A weren’t as kind to McGehee, which won eight games in 2022 and five in 2023, but the Owls are considered a favorite in 3A-8 this fall.
Haddock said his squad is young but experienced.
“We’re going to have a lot of underclassmen starting, but they’ve been in the field,” Haddock said. “We’re going to be big up front. That’s something we’re not normally known for. We’ve had some smaller linemen, but we’ve had some bigger kids work. We’re going to be a pretty good size up front, so we’re all excited.”
Just as McGehee and Dumas are dropping down from 3A, so is new Rison coach Chris Vereen, who was previously at Star City.
Rison finished 3-8 last season after an 0-7 start in its first season without longtime coach Clay Totty in charge. That was a major fall from the year prior, when Totty led the Wildcats to an 11-1 season which included a conference championship and state semifinal berth.
Vereen said the first time he met with Rison’s players as their new coach, he could see in their eyes how they felt about 2023.
“They’re hungry,” Vereen said. “They felt like they let the community down, and they went to work. Just like at Star City last year, they had a lot of injuries, some guys early. Some guys that were ineligible, that hurt them really bad. But those guys are back, and again, these kids are ready to win.”
Vereen said Rison’s tradition and the support of the community attracted him to the job. His first head job was at Gillett, and he said he knew he wanted to get back to small town football before he retired.
The departures from 4A opened the door for southeast Arkansas’ teams at that level to unify into one conference. Stuttgart moves into 4A-8 and will look to compete after going 7-4 last year, but Warren remains the favorite, as usual.
DeWitt, coming off last year’s breakout 10-2 campaign, will join Stuttgart in trying to keep pace with the Lumberjacks.
In Class 6A, Sheridan is set to begin the Kevin Kelley era. The former Pulaski Academy coach who won nine state championships returns to Arkansas high school football this year and will seek to guide the Yellowjackets to the mountaintop. The question will be how quickly he can build up a program that hasn’t won more than three games in a season since 2019.
The Yellowjackets will get familiar with long bus rides as they must travel to Jonesboro, which is dropping down from 7A, Marion and El Dorado during conference play.