There is something different about the week of the first football game. You can practice all summer, talk about returning starters, new faces, expectations and predictions, but eventually Friday night gets here and we finally get to see what we have. The 2026 Glen Rose Tiger football season officially kicks off Friday night as the Tigers take on Grandview. There are plenty of questions surrounding this year's team, and everybody has an opinion. How good will they be? Who steps up? Who becomes the player nobody was talking about in August? How quickly does everything come together under Coach Jeff Pair? I've been around high school football long enough to give you my expert opinion: "I have no idea". My analysis: We'll find out Friday night. Maybe that is why FAW, (Find A Way), fits this team and this season so well. It's something Coach Pair and the Tigers have embraced, and it is a pretty simple message. Things aren't always going to go right. You're going to get hit in the mouth, somebody is going to miss an assignment, the ball is going to bounce the wrong direction and there will be nights when Plan A isn't working. Figure it out. Find A Way. A NEW SEASON: There have been plenty of changes around Glen Rose athletics this year, including a new Glen Rose Athletic Booster Club board. A lot of familiar faces have stepped into different roles, and since I know these people personally, I thought it would be good to introduce everybody and give the community an idea of who is doing what behind the scenes. Blayne Baley serves as President, with Taylor Moody as Vice President while also handling Homecoming. So, when the great "trash-can debacle of 2022" repeats itself, call Taylor Moody! Just Kidding!! Good Luck Moody! The "Wizard of Friendliness", Eric Denson, is continuing his role as Treasurer and oversees Friday night concessions, which means on Friday nights Eric may actually have the most important job in the entire organization. Melissa Stanton serves as Secretary and handles apparel logistics. Amanda Yeager oversees volleyball concessions and social media. Amanda is the "social goddess" who has stepped into this role flawlessly! Jessica and I drove up social media content over the years, however, Amanda has thrown it into overdrive! Just in the last 28 days, the GRABC Booster page has over 146,000 views! Turney Coulter is Vice President of Concessions, and Rebecca Sehnert handles basketball concessions and SignUpGenius. Price Pritchard serves as Vice President of Corporate Sponsorships, Jason Connally is responsible for banner maintenance, and Lance Simmons coordinates the spirit flags. Our Apparel Trailer Coordinator Tara Janszen will be taggin’, baggin’ and keeping the new trailer rolling this season, and thankfully, she’ll be doing it in air conditioning! The old AC decided to leave us high and dry over the summer, but Daffan Cooling and Heating came to the rescue with a brand-new unit. I’ll say this about David and Shanee Daffan, and not just because they saved us from selling shirts in a rolling oven. They are genuinely two of the nicest and most considerate people I know. Their boys, Brazos and Watson, are just as respectful and a reflection of a great family. Watson is definitely the funniest, though. Sorry, Brazos. Thank you to the entire Daffan family for always supporting Glen Rose! Autumn Anderson is pulling apparel orders in between her being an awesome realtor and a giver-of-happiness, and Michael Anne Pritchard handles Mascot Media logistics. Sonya King graciously stepped up to handle Thursday night concessions also. Sometimes Thursdays can just be as wild as Friday nights! Then, of course, there is the Tiger Tunnel. After all these years, I just can’t seem to let it go. Even when my oldest boys were playing pee wee football, I carried around my own homemade air horn, built from a five-gallon air tank and a set of truck horns. I think I eventually gave that thing to GRYFA. Are y’all still using it, or did somebody finally decide it was a public safety concern? When I first saw the Polaris 6x6 that Matt Holder and his gang of dads got sponsored, I knew right then that one day I had to do something like that. I actually wrote about the history of the horn on our previous platform years ago, so maybe it’s time I document that story again. There's something different about blowing up that big ole Tiger and having the boys in red get hyped. It just hits different. Man, do I have the stories.... For now, Jessica and I are still handling this particular piece of insanity. After all these years, apparently, I'm addicted to the Tiger Spirit. Or maybe I just enjoy hiding and blowing that horn to scare people. Sorry, not sorry. Even as we step back, the show goes on. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people never see. These board members are volunteers with jobs, kids, families and plenty of other things they could be doing. Concessions don't magically stock themselves; banners don't hang themselves, apparel doesn't magically appear, although sometimes I think people believe it does, and somebody has to keep all the little pieces moving. We have been involved with this organization for a long time, and I know firsthand how much work happens when nobody is watching. I appreciate anybody willing to give their time to these kids and this community. One of the biggest changes this season is Coach Jeff Pair stepping into the head football coaching role. Any time there is a change like that, people are naturally curious about what the program is going to look like. Every coach has his own personality and way of doing things, but one thing I have really enjoyed seeing from Coach Pair is how much he wants the community involved. He gets it. Friday night football in Glen Rose is bigger than the eleven players standing on the field. It's the football players, cheerleaders, band, drill team, students, parents, little kids wearing Tiger jerseys, businesses supporting the program, people working concessions and an entire town filling Tiger Stadium on Friday night. Coach Pair has been extremely receptive to that part of the job. He wants people involved, he wants the community around these kids, and from everything I've seen so far, he's falling right into the role. We've also been working behind the scenes trying to build out the athletics app, schedules, rosters and player information. Part of that has been the player bios you've started seeing. We wanted people to get to know these young athletes as more than a jersey number running across the field or court on game-day. Getting the players to actually fill them out has been another story. Apparently asking a teenager their favorite sport memory, nickname and what being a Glen Rose Tiger means to them is roughly equivalent to asking them to complete a mortgage application. So bear with us. We are still chasing some of them down and trying to get everything finished. We are doing the best we can with the time we have, and hopefully by the end of this process you will know a little more about the kids you're cheering for. Football isn't the only thing happening in Tiger Nation either. The Lady Tiger volleyball team is hitting its stride and had a big night Tuesday, August 25, sweeping Godley at home. Volleyball season gets moving fast, and these girls are already giving Glen Rose fans plenty to be excited about. There is a lot of season ahead, but it is great seeing them getting into a rhythm. Cross country is also in full stride, and Abigail Shaffer gave us one of the most impressive performances of the young season at Brownwood. Abigail is the Brownwood Meet Champion after running an 11:03 and beating the second place finisher by 42 seconds. By the way, she was competing against 187 other girls! Forty two seconds! I don't know enough about competitive running to give you a technical breakdown of that performance, but I know enough to understand that when you beat the next person by 42 seconds, you weren't just having a pretty good morning. For some perspective, if you ever see me running for 11 minutes and three seconds, don't stand there and clap. You need to start running too. Something has gone horribly wrong. Either somebody is chasing me, or I have received information that the concession stand is about to run out of something important. My preferred cross country strategy has always been to park closer to an entrance! Congratulations to Abigail and all of our Glen Rose runners. What cross country athletes voluntarily put themselves through is something I will never understand, but I certainly respect it. Great job, girls. Now we get to Friday night. Grandview comes to town for the season opener, and after an entire offseason of talking, guessing, practicing and preparing, we finally get some answers. Somebody has heard we're going to be really good. Somebody else has concerns. Somebody knows somebody who watched Grandview. Somebody's cousin knows a guy who talked to a coach. Welcome to high school football in a small Texas town. I've been around Glen Rose football long enough to know that August predictions don't mean much once that ball is kicked. What I do know is that there will be adversity. Somebody will make a mistake. There will probably be a moment Friday night when things don't go exactly according to plan, and at some point this season these Tigers are going to have to decide how they respond when things get difficult. That's where FAW becomes more than something you put on a shirt. Find A Way. That's football, but it's also a pretty good description of what makes a team successful. Do your job, pick up the guy beside you, adjust when something isn't working and keep moving forward. As for the rest of us, our job Friday night is a little easier. Fill Tiger Stadium, wear red, be loud and make Grandview fully aware that Tiger stripes are cooler than Zebra stripes. The tunnel will go up. The train horn will be ready. The flags will fly. The band will play. The stands will fill, and Coach Pair will lead his Tigers onto the field for the first time as head coach. After that, there isn't much left to write about. We'll find out. Go Tigers. Find A Way.