The Cedartown High School football team held their “Night of Champions” event on Sunday at Doc Ayers Field. New Head Coach Matt Hollis introduced himself to the community and talked about the upcoming season while the players began to participate in the contests such as the 40-yard dash, 10-yard dash, pro-agility, shuttle run, bench press, squat and power clean.

“My job as a head coach is to make your young men successful,” Hollis stated early in his speech to the crowd. “I want to help your kids graduate from high school and be prepared for the world.”

Hollis followed by saying the three rules to success are to “be on time, be prepared and do right.”

While the players continued to participate in the events, Hollis began to talk about how he expects the players to play this upcoming season.

“I don’t care to impress folks on Friday nights with my coaching abilities,” Hollis said. “I just want us to be physical, hard and blue-collared. I want us to be more physical than the other team and to get after some tails.”

After commenting on how nice the CHS weightroom was, “never seen a training room as nice as the one here,” the new coach stated, Hollis began to explain how the nights “Night of Champions” event was wrapping up the summer workouts.

“Tonight is just our way of wrapping up the summer workouts,” Hollis said. “We are going to award the players who had summer perfect attendance in the workouts and honor the winner of the events tonight as well as reveal the Bulldog P.A.C.K. awards.”

The Bulldog P.A.C.K. awards were based upon “Pride, Attitude, Character and Killer Instinct.”

After addressing the crowd and answering questions from fans, Hollis encouraged all to stay for the award ceremonies and to watch the events from the stands.

Once the events wrapped up, the football team gathered together with the crowd to receive their awards.

Thirty-two players were awarded with summer perfect attendance and 11 players were honored with the “Daily Food Awards” for their performances at the events.

Being honored with the food awards were: Jonathan Popham, Craig Womack, Frank Golden, Sam Tomlinson, Joe Colquitt, Cagney Dyer, Corey Wells, Drew Shaw, Brandon Green, Michael Monroe and Marcus Ross.

The last awards handed out were the Bulldog P.A.C.K. awards. Winning the awards were: sophomores Frank Golden and Corey Wells; juniors Joe Colquitt, Brian Green, Tyler Smith, Brandon Green and Sam Tomlinson. Seniors Michael Monroe, Soloman Prescott, Marcus Ross, Drew Shaw, Russell Tillery and Brett Wallace were also awarded.

“This is a special group,” Hollis said. “In order to receive this award you had to have summer perfect attendance and display pride, attitude, character and killer instinct.”

The players receiving the Bulldog P.A.C.K. award will get an under armour shirt with a Bulldog on it as well as their number.

Cedartown kicked off official practices on Monday and will begin practicing in pads on July 25. That is the first day the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) allows players to practice in full pads.

The Bulldogs first regular season game is on Friday, August 19 against Paulding County. The game kicks off at 7:30 p.m. at Doc Ayers Field.