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After emotional win over Statesboro, SEB starts region schedule at home against Islands
SEB Statesboro 2024
Southeast Bulloch running back Colby Smith , center, breaks through the line and takes off on a long touchdown run to extend the Yellow Jackets lead in the third quarter on Friday, Aug. 16. - photo by SCOTT BRYANT/staff

Bye weeks can come at good times and at bad times. For the Southeast Bulloch Yellow Jackets coming off the high of beating Statesboro 23-18 in their season opener it may have been a bad thing, but head coach Jared Zito and his staff have tried to make the best of it.

The Jackets had their bye week in the second week of the season because they now play in a ten-team region and all ten teams had the second Friday of the season off. This week the Jackets host Islands and from now on out it is an all-region schedule.

Zito says the team made the most of their time off and is ready to try and keep the momentum from their season opening victory going into this Friday against Islands at Fred Shaver Field.

“We really just tried to fine tune what we do,” Zito said. “Our base offense and defense aren’t changing so we just tried to get more reps in during practice and clean up some of the things we struggled with in our opener like penalties. We hope we can stay game-ready though because there’s nothing like the speed and tempo of a Friday night.”

While the team was pretty excited after their win against Statesboro Zito said it actually may have been a good thing to put some time between the Statesboro win and this week’s region opener.

“We told the kids to enjoy the win, but the next day it was time to flush it and move on,” Zito said. “That is easy to say, but when you are 15–18-year-olds it is sometimes kind of hard to do. We had a little extra time to prepare for this week’s game and I think they’ve had plenty of time to forget about Statesboro and concentrate on Islands.”

The Sharks lost their season opener 22-0 to McIntosh County Academy. Islands went 0-10 last year and lost to the Jackets by a score of 30-7. This time around Zito is expecting a little better team as he has seen improvements especially on offense from a year ago.

“Last year they were throwing the ball around quite a bit,” Zito said. “This year they look a little more like there is an offensive gameplan to try and slow the game down a little bit and they are trying to stick with. They have some athletes but they also have a lot of guys playing both ways and we are hoping our depth will pay off with a win Friday.”

Southeast Bulloch and Islands are scheduled for a 7:30 kickoff Friday at Fred Shaver Field in Brooklet.