Jaguar Football To Host Football Camps Across Alabama This Month
Head Coach Joey Jones talking with a wide receiver preseason practice.
If you live somewhere in Alabama outside of Mobile, there’s a chance that head coach Joey Jones and his staff will be hosting a camp near you this summer. Jones and his staff will host five camps across the state later this month, beginning with a two-day camp on the campus of the University of South Alabama followed by camps in Dothan, Montgomery, Birmingham and Decatur.
The two-day camp in Mobile will be for players from the ninth to 12th grades on June 20 and 21 on the University of South Alabama intramural fields in front of the Football Fieldhouse. The participants have a couple of options for the camp, they can attend both days and stay overnight on campus ($200), participate both days and commute ($180) or participate on one of the two days without an overnight stay ($100).
The four other camps will be held at locations around the state beginning with Dothan on June 22 at Rip Hewes Stadium from 6-8:30pm. Montgomery on June 23 at Park Crossing High School from 5-7:30pm. Birmingham on June 24 at Oak Mountain High School from 6-8:30pm. Decatur on June 25 at Decatur High School from 6-8:30.
Each of the four camps across the state will only cost $30 per participant and is open to ninth through 12th graders. The road camps will be shorter versions of what the coaching staff will be doing at the two-day camp in Mobile where they will be teaching fundamentals for each position.
Additionally the school will be sponsoring a 7-on-7 camp on June 19 from 4-9pm on the Jaguar Practice Fields behind the Football Fieldhouse on the South Alabama campus. It will be open to ninth through 12th graders for a full team and will be held in conjunction with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It will cost $345 per team to participate.
South Alabama finished 6-6 overall and bowl eligible in their first season as a full Football Bowl Subdivision member and eligible for postseason play. Though they did not receive a bowl invitation. They finished third in the Sun Belt with a 4-3 record after finishing the season with a three-game winning streak including a season finale win over SBC Co-Champion Louisiana-Lafayette by a score of 30-8.
The camp is yet another way the Jaguar coaching staff is trying to get their name out to reach young prospects in the state of Alabama to build off of the name recognition last season brought the program. “People look at what we did in our first season of D1 (competition) last year and (prospects) saw the Tennessee game (close loss in Knoxville),” Jones told Alabama Media Group. “It’s just amazing what a game like that can do (in terms of recognition). There’s just a lot of excitement around the program and the players are seeing that.”
This season the Jaguars will open on September 6 against Kent State before returning home to host Mississippi State at Ladd-Peebles Stadium on September 13. They will also travel to South Carolina on November 22 and finish out the season at home by hosting Navy. Between Mississippi State and South Carolina, the Jags will play an eight game Sun Belt Conference schedule in nine weeks.
For more information about South Alabama’s football camps you can visit the website www.jaguarfootballcamps.com. Participants can register online or on site for the camps.
South Alabama Releases 2014 Women’s Soccer Schedule
South Alabama released the 2014 women’s soccer schedule on Tuesday. Out of the 20 matches scheduled, 11 of them will be in Mobile.
A home exhibition match against Jacksonville State on August 15th will get their schedule underway before the regular season debut when they host UAB on August 22. UAB defeated the Jaguars 3-2 last season in Birmingham as they finished the season 11-7-2. Nicholls State will visit on August 24, they finished the 2013 season with a record of 12-6-2 with one of their two ties coming against the Jaguars in Thibodaux, Louisiana.
The following weekend the Jags will travel to Troy for the Trojan Classic where the Jags will face Tennessee Tech and Kennesaw State on August 29 and 31 respectively.
On September 5 they will return home to host Southern Miss before three-consecutive games on the road against Southern (September 7), Mississippi State (September 12) and Alabama A&M (September 14).
South Alabama will then host the Jaguar Classic to start a five-match homestand which will also begin conference play for the Jaguars. USA will face North Florida and Fancis Marion on September 19 and 21 respectively. Then they will begin their Sun Belt Conference schedule with Troy on September 26, Louisiana-Monroe on October 3 and Louisiana-Lafayette on October 5.
The Jags will then rotate between pairs of road and homestands to finish out the season. It will begin with a two match road trip at Texas State on October 10 and Appalachian State on October 12. Followed up with a two match homestand against Georgia Southern and Georgia State on October 17 and 19 respectively.
They will then finish out the season with two matches on the road against Arkansas State and Arkansas-Little Rock on October 24 and 26 respectively.
The Jags will look to defend their Sun Belt Conference Tournament championship on November 5-9 at The Cage on the South Alabama campus.
“The opening weekend is going to be big for us,” coach Winkworth said. “We play two teams that we failed to beat last season, so we know we’re going to be in for a test.”
“Our conference schedule is very tough,” Winkworth continued. “We have a lot of traveling to do with flights and long bus rides, so that’s going to be very difficult. The hardest thing is that we’re going to have such a young squad and getting them used to the rigors of such intense travel is going to be difficult, but we have some pretty good leadership with the 10 that are returning so I’m excited about that.”
South Alabama Announced Kickoff Times For Mississippi State, Troy Home Games
Jaguar Pat Moore closes in on Mississippi State quarterback Tyler Russell in the first quarter of the Jaguars 30-10 loss to the Bulldogs on September 22, 2012.
The University of South Alabama announced the times for two more football games this fall.
The Jaguars home opener against the Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday, September 13 will kick off at 3pm (CDT) at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. It will also be be nationally televised on ESPN News.
The Jags game against the Bulldogs will be the second game in a 2-for-1 series. The Jags traveled to Starkville in 2012 and will return to Starkville in 2016 in the third and final game of the three-game series.
The Jaguars will host Sun Belt Conference and in-state rival Troy on Friday, October 24 with kickoff time scheduled for 6:30pm at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. In the third meeting between the two schools, it will also be the third time that their match-up will be televised. This season it will be televised on ESPNU nationally.
Last season the Jaguars trailed 24-7 early in the third quarter but the Jaguars scored 20 points in the fourth quarter with the 65 yard touchdown pass from Ross Metheny to Jereme Jones and a two-point conversion from Metheny to Corey Besteda to take a 33-27 lead with 0:48 left in the game. However a desperate heave into the endzone by Corey Robinson was caught by Eric Thomas to tie the game with the extra point giving the Trojans a one point lead 34-33 with 0:07 left in the game. The Jags were unable to get it into the endzone with one second left from their own 32 yard line.
Tickets for the Mississippi State home game are currently available only as part of a 2014 Jaguar Football season ticket plan with limited availability on the West side of the stadium. According to the South Alabama Ticket Office, single-game ticket availability is not guaranteed. A season ticket purchase will give you ticket to Mississippi State and Troy along with Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Texas State and Navy. Visit the South Alabama Athletics home page for tickets or call the South Alabama Ticket Office by calling 251.461.1USA.
Coach Fowler Announces Promotion And Hiring On Women’s Basketball Staff
South Alabama Women’s Basketball head coach Terry Fowler announced the promotion of Mallory Luckett to assistant head coach and the hiring of Matthew Daniels as the new director of basketball operations on Monday.
Luckett served as the director of operations for the women’s team last season. She served on coach Fowlers staff at the University of North Alabama for the previous three seasons. Her first two seasons she served as a graduate assistant before moving into an assistant coaching position for the 2012-2013 season at UNA after earning her master’s degree in criminal justice.
She arrived at UNA after playing four seasons at Murray State where she was a walk-on. She earned a scholarship her sophomore year and became a starter for her junior and senior seasons. During her senior season she became the only Racer to earn a triple-double when she posted 14 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds against Jacksonville State.
During her first season with coach Fowler she helped guide the team to a 21-7 record and a first place finish in the Gulf South Conference East Division. They advanced to the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time since 1994.
Daniels joins the program after spending one season as Jacksonville University where he was a graduate assistant coach on the men’s basketball staff under Cliff Warren for the 2013-2014 season. As a graduate assistant with the Dolphins, he organized and edited video for scouting and player development and also scheduled team functions and events.
Daniels received his bachelors of science degree from UNA in 2012 and began working on his masters of education degree while at JU. While at UNA, Daniels served as a student manager for four seasons 2008-2012 for UNA’s head coach Bobby Champagne. As a senior he also worked as a student worker in the UNA Compliance Office. He has been a member of the Rising Coaches Elite since June 2011.
Congratulations Coach Luckett and welcome to JagNation Coach Daniels.
Two Track And Field Members Will Represent USA At NCAA National Championships
Kaitlyn Beans and Renaldo Frechou look to make Jaguar history for the Track and Field teams in their first seasons donning the Jaguar uniforms.
They will travel to Eugene, Oregon this week to compete in the NCAA Division I National Championships with an opportunity to become All-Americans.
Beans is the first individual in school history of the men’s or women’s program to qualify for the national finals in any of the four jumping events: triple jump, long jump, high jump or pole vault. She earned her berth by placing seventh in the women’s triple jump at the East Region Preliminary Championships recently. She is the first-ever Jaguar freshman to advance to the national event.
But to make the story more facinating, Beans never competed in the triple jump before joining the Jaguar team. She was a three-sport start at Brewbaker Technology High School in Montgomery, Alabama.
Her performance in postseason competition has been quite remarkable as she earned the gold medal in the Sun Belt Conference Championships with a jump of 13.19m and set a new school record by more than four-tenths of a meter and topped her personal best by more than seven-tenths of a meter.
Frechou, a sophomore from Paarl, South Africa, set all-time Jaguar records in the men’s hammer throw in his first meet of his Jaguar career at the Jaguar Opener in March. He became the first Jaguar to throw over the 60-meter mark. He would break his own record five more times over the course of the season by routinely improving his marks. He tossed a 64.36m at the regional preliminaries and never finished outside of the top five until the regional competition.
They look to join an elite club of five individuals who have earned All-American honors at South Alabama. David Kimani (2000), Tonny Okello (2006, ’07) and Vincent Rono (2006, ’07) for the men and Adjoke Odumosu (2007) and Lindsay Schwartz (2011, ’12) for the women’s team. If they finish among the top eight in their respective events then they could add their names to that list.
The competition will be held June 11-14 in Eugene, Oregon.
Jaguar Pitcher St. John Drafted By Detroit Tigers In 2014 MLB Draft
Locke St. John, a junior from Pell City, AL, was named the SBC Pitcher of the Week on Monday. This is the first for the Jaguars since March 25, 2013. He was selected in the 32nd round of the 2014 MLB First-Year draft on Saturday by the Detroit Tigers. | Photo by: Brad Puckett usajaguars.com
South Alabama’s Locke St. John was selected in the 32nd round of the 2014 Major League Baseball draft by the Detroit Tigers on Saturday with the 970th overall pick and one of 22 pitchers taken by the Tigers in their 40 picks.
St. John, a Pell City, Alabama native, finished the season with a 6-3 record for the Jaguars with a 3.24 ERA in 15 starts. He Struck out 52 batters and walked 29 in 97 1/3 innings pitched. He also pitched one complete game and combined for a shutout this season. He finished tied for sixth in the Sun Belt Conference in wins, seventh in ERA (sixth among pitchers) while his number of innings ranked fifth in the conference.
This is the second consecutive season a Jaguar lefty has been drafted after Kyle Bartsch was taken in the seventh round of last years draft.
St. John said he was humbled and that he and his family has some thinking to do. He also said that, “I know this would not be possible without the great teammates and coaches I have at South Alabama.”
St. John is a junior and would have one more season of eligibility left if he returns to the Jaguars for next season.
Jaguar Football Announces Two Road Kickoff Dates This Fall
The University of South Alabama announced kickoff times for their first two road games of the 2014 season.
They will open the season on Saturday, September 6 at Kent State with kickoff scheduled for 1pm CDT and will be broadcast live on ESPN3. This will be the Jaguars second trip to Kent, Ohio and the third time overall they have met on the gridiron. The Jags lost the first game in 2012 in Ohio, then defeated them last season in Mobile.
The Jags will then return home for two games, including their home opener against Mississippi State and their conference opener against Sun Belt newcomer Georgia Southern.
Their next road game will be on September 27 when they travel to Moscow, Idaho to take on the Idaho Vandals in the Kibbie Dome. Kickoff for that game is scheduled for 4pm CDT. This will be the Vandals first season in the Sun Belt as they joined as football-only members.
Kickoff times for all remaining games are still yet to be determined.
Phil Steele Selects League Leading 18 Jaguars To All-Conference Teams
Phil Steele, sportswriter and analyst who releases one of the most popular preseason magazines each season, recently released his preseason All-Sun Belt Conference team with South Alabama well represented.
In all 18 Jaguars made it into his list, which is tops for the conference. The next closest is co-defending conference champion Louisiana-Lafayette with 15, then co-defending champion Arkansas State, Louisiana-Monroe and Texas State with 13.
Shavarez Smith WR, Wes Saxton TE, Melvin Meggs OG and Aleem Sunanon K all received First-Team selections.
Drew Dearman OG, Chris May OT, Ucambre Williams OT, Maleki Harris LB and Montell Garner CB all received Second-Team selections.
Jay Jones RB, Danny Woodson WR, Jerome McClain DT, Qudarius Ford CB, Terrell Brigham S and TJ. Glover KR received Third-Team selections.
Marvin Shinn WR, Jimmie Gipson LB, and Jesse Kelley DT received Fourth-Team selections.
Last season the Jaguars only had eight selections to Steele’s Preseason team. This season, four of the five starting offensive linemen were selected to either the first or second team. Three players from the secondary were selected and three wide receivers were selected.
If his selections are any indications as to how the Jags may fare against Sun Belt opponents this season, the season looks bright for the Jaguars.
South Alabama opens the 2014 season at Kent State on September 6 and open their home schedule the following week when they host Mississippi State on September 13.
Jag Coaches To Provide Instruction At GoDaddy Bowl Youth Clinic
The GoDaddy Bowl is played at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama and typically pits a Sun Belt Conference team against Mid-American Conference team. | photo: godaddybowl.com
The University of South Alabama head coach Joey Jones and his staff will be instructing children from age 5 to 13 in the GoDaddy Bowl’s football clinic on Saturday, June 14 at Mobile Christian School.
The youth clinic will feature instruction by coach Jones’ staff in several areas of the game as well as in proper technique and football safety.
Participants will have the opportunity to take part in all of the drills provided which also includes offensive and defensive positions. It will also include proper blocking techniques, passing and pass-catching techniques as well as many other position-specific drills. They will also learn about the importance of character development and sportsmanship.
Participants must register online and bring the waiver included in the registration process with them to the clinic. Participants should wear cool, comfortable clothing and cleats and other equipment are not required. It is suggested that participants arrive early so things may proceed in a timely manner.
“We are excited to be hosting this event again this year and are looking forward to having coach Jones and his staff back with us,” Kelley Wright, director of ticket sales for the GoDaddy Bowl, told Alabama Media Group. “We had well over 300 kids at this clinic last year and look forward to great participation and attendance again this year.”
For more information visit the GoDaddy Bowl website or click here to go directly to the event page for the telephone number and email address to contact organizers from the GoDaddy Bowl or to register for the clinic.