The Lights Are On Again: South Jersey Football Is Back, and It Never Gets Old

There's a sound you only get one weekend a year, and it came back to South Jersey this week. It's the sound of a marching band running through the fight song at half-speed while the sun's still up, of cleats on a track, of a PA announcer testing the mic — "check, check, one-two" — over a field that's been sitting quiet since November. Opening weekend. Friday night lights are back.

I've covered enough of these to know the schedule doesn't care that it's still technically summer. The kids who reported to double sessions in the August heat, the coaches who mapped out this fall back in the spring — they've been pointing at this week the whole time. And now it's here.

The names at the top

The names at the top of the South Jersey conversation are familiar ones. Millville, always in the mix, comes in with something to prove after last year's grind. Williamstown will be right there with them — these two have a habit of writing playoff-caliber football into the middle of a regular season, and anyone who saw their last meeting remembers how it ended: 28-21, decided by a game-winning touchdown from Reggie Holley that the folks in Millville are still talking about. When these programs cross paths, you clear your calendar.

Over in Group 5, Washington Township set the bar as high as it goes last season — a perfect run, undefeated, the kind of year a program measures itself against for a decade. The hard part about perfection is that everybody spends the next fall trying to take it from you. That target is on the Minutemen now, and they know it.

Somewhere out there tonight is a senior playing his first varsity snap because he waited three years for it and finally earned the spot.Jake Sullivan

Why I keep showing up

But here's what I love about opening weekend, and it's got nothing to do with rankings. There's a sophomore quarterback whose hands are shaking in the huddle. There's a coach in his twentieth season who still can't sleep the night before Game 1, and a dad in the stands who used to play on that same field and now watches his kid do it. The scoreboard tells you who won. It doesn't tell you about the kid on the JV who carried water all summer, or the booster club that grilled 300 burgers to keep the program funded.

The season is long. There will be blowouts and heartbreakers, upsets nobody saw coming, and at least one Friday in October where the whole thing comes down to a two-point try. We'll get to all of it. But tonight, the only thing that matters is that the lights are on again. Fill up the bleachers. Buy the 50/50 ticket. Yell yourself hoarse for a bunch of teenagers giving everything they've got for their town. It never gets old, and I hope it never does.

Based on reporting from Sports Illustrated High School, MaxPreps, and Shore Sports Insider.