Wenda G. Bailey | Special to the TimesClinch senior offensive lineman David Montgomery III holds up his helmet during a game against Irwin County last season in Ocilla.

HOMERVILLE – It’s beginning to look a lot like football in Homerville, Ga.

For the first time this summer, the Clinch County Panthers donned full pads this week in preparation for the upcoming season. It was a breath of fresh air for Clinch County head coach Don Tison Jr. and the rest of the Panthers program.

“You work out, run and do all of that stuff to play football and you go for so long without actually playing football. When you finally get to tackle somebody and run the ball and try to break a tackle and that kind of stuff, that’s what is fun about football, really,” Tison said. “That’s the fun part of it. It was a good day (Monday). The kids enjoyed it.”

The next few weeks of practice will be focused on building the team’s depth. This season more than ever, teams must be ready to plug in capable substitutes at various positions in case the coronavirus becomes a factor.

“I really feel good about our first 11 on offense and defense. The game plan will change from week to week but as far as our offensive and defensive philosophy and the plays that we’re going to run, we pretty much have got all of that in. We’ve just got to fine-tune it now and focus on the execution of each little minor detail of the play,” Tison said. “The biggest thing now is developing depth, just trying to create some depth, because looking at this season and not really knowing what’s going to happen, there may be some games where we don’t have three or four players. You don’t know what the future holds as far as that goes. We’re going to try to build as much depth as possible so we can be ready for anything.”

Clinch will open the regular season on Saturday, Sept. 5 against Lincoln County at Georgia State University.