Hoxie Hosts 14 Teams for Inaugural 7-on-7 Tournament

Hoxie Head Coach Tom Sears is bringing a 7-on-7 tournament to Northeast Arkansas this weekend. "This is our first year. We don't really have any tournaments in this part of the state, so we thought we would host one," Sears said.

East and Northeast Arkansas teams have traditionally been running teams so there has not been a lot of stress for coaches to play 7-on-7 during the summer. "We do okay. We run slot I, but we use it [7-on-7] to work on our pass defense and to work the kids out during the summer," Sears commented about his reasons for playing.

With the success of spread passing teams in other parts of the state, the wide-open offense is starting to leak into the Northeast. At least four of those spread teams will be featured in this weekends tournament in Jonesboro, Bald Knob, Greene County Tech, and Valley View. All total, there will be 14 teams making an appearance in Hoxie on Saturday.

The 14 teams will be divided into two pools. Beginning at 9:00 AM on Saturday, each team will play each member of their pool for a guarantee of 6 games. The teams with the best record in pool play meet in the championship game at 5:50. Sears said "Fountain Lake does a really good job with their tournament, so we are setting it up the same way."

One pool will feature Jonesboro, Harrisburg, Mountain Home, Bald Knob, Greene County Tech, Manilla, and Hoxie. The other pool will be made up of Nettleton, Cave City, Valley View, Paragould, Marion, Gosnell, and Fountain Lake.

Jonesboro should be one of the favorites as they run a spread offense and are the largest school competing. Fountain Lake is coming off an undefeated run in their tournament this past weekend, so they should make some noise.

There will be a few interesting things to watch in this weekend's event. Jonesboro, with new head coach Randy Coleman, will be running their new offense. GCT is in the same situation with new head coach Jeff Conaway. Hopefully, they can improve and learn from their experience at the VYPE Tournament last weekend. Valley View has a new head coach, but they will likely have few changes as offensive coordinator Shannon Sherman takes over as the head coach. Lastly, it will be interesting to see how Bald Knob plays as they enter their second year in the spread with the Tony Franklin system.