With a century of football already behind them, the Albertville Aggies are gearing up to hit the gridiron this coming season and kick off a new century for the Albertville program.
Aggies head football coach Tommy Tharp, said that program will start with a mini camp on July 28, before "hitting it wide open" with the first official practice on August 4.
Albertville has planned a meet the Aggies night for August 15, and the program will play in a Jamboree game at Brewer on August 22.
The Aggies will officially open the 2008 season with an away game at Ashville on August 29, before returning home to face Southside on September 5.
The Southside game will be the first official varsity football in the Aggies’ new stadium.
With new grass on the field and bleachers already up, the new Albertville football stadium is nearing completion.
"They should be done by the end of the month," said Tharp. "They have a few more bricks to lay, but they are mainly on the inside stuff."
The Aggies will play four other games on the new home turf this season, including a September 19 matchup against Etowah and a September 26 homecoming game against John Carroll. Albertville will also host Scottsboro on October 17, and the program will close out the regular season with a home game against Marshall County rival Guntersville on October 31.
Albertville will be competing in Class 5A Region 7 and will face a couple of new Area opponents this season, including county rival Boaz.
"We lost Butler and Lee and picked up Boaz and Madison County," said Tharp. "Both of those are playoff teams from last year."
The Albertville coach said that Region 7 has "got nothing but tougher," but also noted that he felt like the Aggies are "at the point where we can play with some of those people now."
Kyle Busch won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series LifeLock.com 400 to complete the weekend sweep at Chicagoland Speedway. (Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Kyle Busch Chases NASCAR History In Kentucky
Kyle Busch stands a victory away from making NASCAR history as the first driver to win a race in all three of the NASCAR's national series in successive starts.
Busch, a two-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series winner in 2008, hopes to add Saturday's Built Ford Tough 225 at Kentucky Speedway to last weekend's NASCAR Sprint Cup/Nationwide Series sweep at Chicagoland Speedway.
Busch already is a member of a select group of drivers who have won in all three national series in the same season, posting a victory each year from 2005-08. Terry Labonte (1995) and Kevin Harvick (2003) also pulled off that triple.
The opportunity is just the latest milestone in what any NASCAR driver would consider a milestone season: The Sprint Cup Series championship lead on the strength of seven victories; five Nationwide Series wins and top-five point ranking; and truck wins back-to-back at Auto Club Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway.
While Busch has never competed in a truck race at Kentucky, the 23-year-old competitor was the track's Nationwide Series winner in 2004. An accident while running second sidelined him from last month's Meijer 300 at the Sparta, Ky. facility.
Busch, who drives the Miccosukee Resorts/NOS Energy Drink Toyota for Billy Ballew Motorsports, most recently competed in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series on June 14. He finished seventh at Michigan International Speedway.
To Busch, the record is secondary to pushing Ballew back into contention for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series owners' championship. Ballew ranked second after the Michigan round but has fallen to fifth, 63 points behind leader DeLana Harvick whose driver, Ron Hornaday Jr., also leads the standings heading into the season's 13th race.
"I want to keep Billy up front and no one else can do it," said Busch. "I think it's cool that as long as he's been in the sport, he's finally got a chance to win a championship and I want to help him keep that alive."
