The official-unoffical start of the 2023 high school football campaign kicked off on Friday night. Northeast Georgia area tprograms were among dozens of teams around the state to get things started.
North Hall and Flowery Branch battled at Falcons Field while Commerce played host to Gilmer. East Hall traveled to Habersham Central, North Forsyth went up Highway 9 to Dawson County, and Towns County entertained Copper Basin, Tenn. as every team was doing more evaluating than worrying about the scoreboard.
North Hall's Sean Pender said they will have plenty to go over after being run over in the first half by the Falcons. Branch scored on a 75-yard run by Malik Dryden on the first play of the game and he added another long scoring run as they jumped out to a quick 20-0 lead in the first quarter.
"We didn't start off ready. We have to be ready to play when we get off the bus," Pender said. "We let them bust two gut plays right up the middle without hardly touching them. But on the positive side we finally settled down and came back with two touchdowns so that was good to see."
Falcons coach Jason Tester was pleased for a scrimmage.
"I saw a lot of good things.Anytime you can hit a big play like that off the bat is huge," Tester said. "The key thing for us was we talked about just coming out and executing. We did a lot of good things but there's still a lot of things we need to fix. But finding the things we need to work on it was scrimmages are for."
Click "play" above to watch video of Friday night's action around the area.
