~courtesy of The Jackson Sun~
The SportsPlus Jamboree, which traditionally occurs the Friday before Week 0 in August, will move this year to Pringles Park after spending the last two years at Gibson County High School.
“We’d been looking to get it back in Jackson, and Mike Sparks, who was in charge of FCA, asked me what I thought about having it at Pringles Park,” said LeAnn Childress, the director of SportsPlus. “We brought a proposal to the Generals, and they liked it.”
Generals GM Jason Compton said the team is on a road trip that week, and the field will have three days before the Generals’ next home game.
“We think that time plus work from our grounds crew will be enough time for the field to heal,” Compton said.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes will also be involved in the jamboree as well.
The field on which the teams will play won’t be a normal football field. It will start just inside the third-base dugout and go up the right-field line. But it will only be 80 yards long.
“We could’ve gone 100 yards, but it would’ve put the end of the field right up on the wall,” Compton said. “Everybody agreed it would be safer to shorten the field since it’s an exhibition.”
Childress said all the coaches were informed of the possible change and were OK with it.
The teams who will be part of the jamboree will be all seven teams from Jackson -- JCM, USJ, JCS, TCA, Liberty, North Side and South Side – along with South Gibson, Scotts Hill and Dyer County.
“Ten teams is a good number to keep it at, so that will probably be all the teams involved,” Childress said.
This is the 20th season of the jamboree that moved around the city of Jackson for years before going to Gibson County the past two years.
