The faces change, but the game stays the same

Chris Norman, a former coach at Shelby, gave me one of my favorite truths about high school football. He said, “The best thing about freshmen and sophomores is that they grow up to be juniors and seniors.”

I’m pretty sure that quote wound up in a Shelby Star football preview story of mine about 15 years ago.

The flip side to this, of course, is that those juniors and seniors eventually move on. The cycle then begins again.

The most obvious example for me when I put this year’s preview together is at the quarterback position. The six Johnston County schools that feature traditional quarterbacks will have new starters this fall, and North Johnston, which runs the single wing, will likely have some new faces behind center as well.

So, your favorite high school football team will likely be a little different in 2022. But the nature of the game is change, and how teams respond to it is what often separates the victors from the vanquished on Friday nights.

With that in mind, we proudly present the 2022 Johnston County High School Football Preview. As usual, I need to thank the coaches who let me bother them with high school football questions in the middle of the summer. Without them, you certainly wouldn’t be reading this.

There are plenty of countywide storylines for the coming season, and we’ll touch on some of them in this edition.

In closing, I’ll leave you with another of my favorite Coach Norman sayings: “If you give me a team full of orphans, I’ll win you a state championship.”

Well, he never had one of those teams, but he won three titles anyway.

Happy reading!