MIDDLE SCHOOL FOOTBALL

The focus is usually on the high school level when it comes to area sports.

However, the middle school level is just as an important starting point for team play.

This season marks the first year of the newly organized Lexington 10 Athletic Conference for mostly Lexington District 1 middle schools.

“Dr. Little, the District One superintendent, remarked last year that with the addition of the new Beechwood Middle School, that we’d be up to 8 schools in the district,” Lexington 1 Athletics Director David Bennett said. “That’s a great conference size, we decided, and after reaching out to Batesburg and Sandhills Middle schools, we came up with a 10-team arrangement using 2 divisions to split up the 5 largest and 5 smallest into ‘North’ and ‘South’ divisions.”

The new conference does allows teams to compete locally during their 8-game season, eliminating longer travel dates and increasing crowd size by having all of the teams closer together, according to Bennett.

“It was neat to have a jamboree this year and have all of our schools there,” he said. “We’ve already seen larger crowds and more interest at the football games, which means more ticket sales and more money for the programs.”

The Lexington 10 Athletic Conference will eventually expand to all sports played at the middle school level, including volleyball, basketball, baseball. As this first year progresses, more conference events are being planned, he says, including a possible conference track meet at the Gilbert track and field facilities.

Right now, the focus is on the current football season. Carolina Springs Middle School is taking full advantage of the new alignment, kicking off their season with wins over Pelion, Meadow Glen and Sandhills.

“It has been pretty good competition for us,” Carolina Springs head coach and athletics director Matthew Hall said. “Meadow Glen has a very good team. That was a good win for us against a sound program.”

Football at the C Team middle school level is competitive, but it’s also a learning environment for the players, Hall noted.

“Middle school is where the real teaching is, where habits are formed and where they learn to play as a team,” he said. “We do lots of play repetition, focus on the mental work that goes into the game. When they get to high school, they know the plays, we use the same system as White Knoll High school so that it’s not new to them when they get to that level.”

With a conference, the teams involved will have the chance to compete to be conference champs. According to Bennett, that’s not the major goal.

“We want them learning technique, skills, how to be a great teammate,” he said, adding the long term aim is to expand the conference to multiple grade levels.

“Our vision is that by 2021 if you have enough participation that there could be a 7th and an 8th grade team in football, volleyball, and basketball.”