New leadership, high powered offenses lead way in 2025
The 2024 football season was one to remember with the first undefeated regular season for the Westwood Panthers and a state championship appearance for the Oakwood Panthers.
How will the 2025 season top that finish? A new regime starts in Elkhart under Ryan Blackmon as he replaces Cody Day, who is now at Coldspring- Oakhurst.
The Westwood Panthers head into the upcoming season returning a high powered offense led by one of the top quarterbacks in the state and country in junior Kavian Bryant. With Bryant under center, could we see another year with over 60 points per game offensively from coach Richard Bishop’ s squad?
Just down the road, the Oakwood Panthers return all but one starter from last year’ s squad as they look to return to the bright lights of AT & T Stadium for another trip to the state championship game. The Panthers hope 2025 brings a different result for the area’ s only sixman school.
The Grapeland Sandies are another team looking to make it to state after
falling just short in a strong 2024 season under coach Jordan Wood. The Sandies return a lot of experience to the roster and could make some big noise this year.
Palestine once again hopes to bounce back from last year’ s 1-9 season as coach James Reyes gears up for his second year leading the Wildcats. They currently have two Division I commits in Cason Applewhite to North Texas and S’ Vioarean Martin to Texas Tech University.
The Cayuga Wildcats and Elkhart Elks bring back lots of talent as well in hopes of making it to the postseason in 2025.
When it comes to the newest edition of Endzone, we would like to thank all of the advertisers, players, coaches and photographers who helped put out this edition.
I would personally like to thank Stuart Whitaker and PennyLynn Webb for the cover shot and featured player photos that are included with each school. I would also like to thank Laurie Gould for her assistance with the Frankston Indians headshots.
The coaches make the production of Endzone smooth even though they are sacrificing their time for us to feature their athletes in this magazine.
We hope you enjoy this edition of the Endzone Magazine and everything coming your way from the sports department at the Palestine Herald-Press.
The scrimmages are over and now it is time for the games which count. Bring on the Friday Night Lights and to all of the athletes, Go Hard or Go Home.
Joe Elerson is the sports writer for the Palestine Herald-Press. He can be reached at sports @ palestineherald. com.
From all of us at the Palestine Herald-Press, we wish all of our area teams success during the season
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