By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Another high school football season begins in Rowan County on Friday night.

North Rowan is at East Rowan, and A.L. Brown is at West Rowan in the marquee local games.

East hasn’t beaten the Cavaliers since 2010, but new head coach Brian Flynn has brought energy to Granite Quarry. East won Thursday’s jayvee game, which may or may not mean anything as far as the varsity contest. WSAT, with Ken Amderson on play-by-play, will broadcast the action. The kickoff is at 7:30 p.m.

The Falcons have beaten the Wonders just once in the history of the world, and that earth-shaking event took place 24 years ago. That comeback victory led to the first conference championship in program history.  Both programs were a disappointing 5-6 last season. Both are hungry and eager for a solid start. Both have experienced QBs and big linemen.

A Salisbury team with a sea of new faces and an uncertain destiny for the first time in a number of years  heads to North Davidson.

Carson hosts Mount Pleasant, as current coach Jonathan Lowe takes on a friend, former Carson and current Mount Pleasant head coach Daniel Crosby. Carson has almost as many new faces as Salisbury.

South Rowan is at Union Academy, a team the Raiders beat last season, so it’s an important game for a South team that is optimistic about moving up in the local football world.

This will be the 30th football season for me at the Salisbury Post.  My first football assignment for the Post as a stringer was covering an A.L. Brown game at Forest Hills in 1995. The sports department had six guys available for high school football duty then, four full-time and two part-time, plus a small army of photographers. So the Post was able to do things that seem mind-boggling in 2024 —  like covering the Wonders at Forest Hills.

On May 31, 1997, Ronnie Gallagher, who had joined the Post staff in 1996, was elevated to sports editor. His first act in office was to recommend me for promotion from part-time to full-time sports reporter.

Post sports went everywhere in those glory years. I put major mileage on cars. I recall covering a North Stanly football game at Trinity where it wasn’t easy convincing the guy policing the front gate that the Salisbury Post was actually covering the Comets on a road trip. I remember Bret Strelow volunteering to staff a Mooresville-South Iredell matchup on an opening night when we had a short Rowan schedule.

There were some draining, 40-hour weekends in those days, but we were all much younger then— high school game Friday, college game on Saturday, frequently a trip to UNC, NC State or Duke, and then the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

Much has changed since those giddy times, not just at the Post, but at every newspaper in the world.

The news department, the sports department and all other Post departments down-sized steadily, as information became instantly available for everyone who owned a mobile phone and demand for printed newspapers plummeted.

As far as full-time sports personnel, the Post quietly declined from four to three in the 2000s.

Not long after Gallagher passed away on a football Friday morning in 2013, the decision was made to try to get the job done with two full-timers in sports.

When COVID hammered the economy in the bleak spring of 2020, the Post sport staff was trimmed one more time, with sports editor Dennis Davidson transferred to advertising sales. The last full-time Post photographer left the building then, and the full-time sports staff was reduced to one person.

I’ll turn 69 in two weeks — knock on wood. I once had planned to retire at 66, announced it, even got honored at a few places for it. Mark Wineka wrote a story about it, although it is still waiting patiently to be published.

I wanted to help the Post handle the world of high school athletics, so I stayed on, and then stayed on some more. I have committed to stick it out at least through the end of 2024. I’m not the sports editor, never have been, never wanted to be. I’m just the last sports guy in the building.

I was honored to be around in 2023 to help keep track of the football season because Salisbury’s Jamal Rule, Mike Geter and Deuce Walker and North Rowan’s Jeremiah Alford and Jaemias Morrow assaulted school record books.

I’ll also remember 2023 for the last pictures Hall of Fame photographer Wayne Hinshaw, still working as hard and brilliantly as ever as a 77-year-old stringer, took for the Post before he passed.

Alford is the only one of those record-breakers still around for the 2024 season. Geter, Walker and Morrow graduated. Rule runs the ball for Charlotte Christian now. More evidence that times change.

The Post somehow still produces five editions each week with a tiny crew, but Wednesdays and Fridays are electronic only. The three printed editions appear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

The Post is no longer printed in Salisbury and is no longer delivered by strong-armed carriers, but by the U.S. Mail. That makes sports coverage challenging. Since the Sunday paper must be delivered on Saturday, the Sunday Post has to be in the hands of the postal service on Friday night.

The Post’s deadline on Fridays is set at 7 p.m., the same time the earliest high school football games kick off.  Obviously, that means no football results in the Sunday print edition.

The Post will continue to do as much as possible online.

You should start seeing high school scores from around the state online late Friday night. but it’s a much different ball game now.