Tiger football preparing for upcoming season

(MANCHESTER, Ky.) – We are a few short weeks away from kickoff! Football time will hit the mountains before we know it, and Tiger Stadium will be rocking on Friday nights. Coach Mike Sizemore and the team have been putting in work this offseason, and I sat down to catch up with Coach to discuss how the 2025 offseason has progressed thus far. 

The Tigers posted a 6-4 record last season and graduated a few key members of the squad. This year’s group has been working nonstop since December. “We’ve had a solid offseason heading into our June practices,” said Tiger head coach Mike Sizemore. “We’ve had a consistent group that has been working hard since the winter, and that has carried over through spring. We still have several kids who are just now coming out, having had busy spring seasons in various sports. It’s always great to have guys on the roster that excel in multiple sports throughout the school year, and that’s something our kids do very well.”

Winter and spring work is vital to having success in the fall, as is summertime practice in the heat. Things will shut down for the dead period in July. Coach Sizemore says it’s the perfect time for players to come out, while also still enjoying their summer.  “June is a great time for our guys to get out and start working together on the fall season,” said Sizemore. “It’s a time that we start getting them together for summer workouts for the first time and it’s also a time that we try to give them to balance life in being an athlete and a kid before things pick up full time after the dead period because we know the pace of the schedule picks up going into the later part of summer. We will have a busy July with a lot of opportunities for our guys to get out there and compete in 7v7s as well as our summer practices to see where we are before the season gets started.”

As previously mentioned, the Tigers lost key members of the 2024 squad to graduation, and newcomers will have big shoes to fill. They also return some very key contributors, such as Aiden Wagers, Jayden Woods, Trenton Reid, and Aidan Carr. “We’ve got some key returners coming back for the fall season that we expect to be able to provide solid leadership on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball for us,” said Sizemore. “We’re getting a lot of our key contributors from last season back from their spring sports season and they are getting to work with some of the guys that we expect to be able to fill some key spots this fall so it’s always interesting to see how the team starts to come together once everyone gets geared up towards football season.”

 

The key to mountain football is being strong in the trenches, and Sizemore believes this 2025 group has what it takes to continue competing. “We return a lot of experience upfront on our offensive and defensive line along with several explosive kids in the skill positions,” said Sizemore. “A major key for us, and it’s always that way, will be the younger kids that are stepping into crucial roles for the first time. If our young guys can get up to speed and can mesh with the guys returning from last year’s squad, I expect us to be able to put a solid product on the field once again.”

Sizemore continued, “we expect Aiden Wagers, Trenton Reid, Jayden Woods, and a few of our other upper-level students that are returning to set the tone for us going into this season and I feel like those guys as well as several others are going to provide that leadership that we need to improve every week through the season. It’s still early in the summer, and our guys know there is a lot of work to be done before we get into the fall, so we have to stay at it every day and see where we can improve as the summer workouts continue and the season approaches.”