Date, stadium changed for North-South all-star football game
The Touchstone Energy Cooperatives North-South football game has a new date and venue this year.
The game will be held Saturday, Dec. 15 at noon and will be played at Coastal Carolina University’s Brooks Stadium, according to co-game coordinator Scott Earley.
The game was originally scheduled for Dec. 8 at Myrtle Beach High School. With South Carolina High School League football championships moved back to Dec. 7-8 because of Hurricane Florence, North-South organizers thought it would be better to push back a week.
The game was moved to Brooks Stadium because Myrtle Beach’s Doug Shaw Stadium was unavailable that day.
“To be in a bind and have good folks at Coastal come through for us is a great thing,” said Earley, who previously coached at Myrtle Beach High. “Coastal will be able to get a lot of people to see their campus and it is a pretty good facility and great venue to play in.”
The North-South game now will be held on the same day of the Shrine Bowl on Dec. 15 at Wofford College unless that game is moved back a week. Because of damage from Hurricane Florence, North Carolina moved its state championship games to Dec. 14-15.
Shrine Bowl Public Relations Chair Joe Sessoms said officials will be in discussions with both North Carolina and South Carolina high school leagues in the next few weeks before any decision regarding date changes is made.
Earley said they wanted to have the North-South game Dec. 14 but there was a conflict with CCU’s graduation that day. In the future, he said, the football coaches are going to discuss having North-South and Shrine Bowl on the same weekend (a Friday and a Saturday) so people can get to both games and it’s not spread out over two weekends.
“We are going to see what happens and hope we can get some positive feedback and something we can do in the future,” Earley said.
Earley said Mr. Football still will be announced at halftime of the North-South game this year.
This story was originally published September 26, 2018 at 2:25 PM.