Tigers top preseason poll

Eufaula head coach Dan Klages considers himself to be a pretty optimistic guy.

More times than not he sees the glass half full rather than half empty.

But even he didn’t see this coming.

Wednesday the Alabama Sports Writer Association released its preseason rankings and Klages’ Tigers topped the list in Class 5A.

Eufaula received 15 of 28 first place votes from the state’s sports writers.

Last season’s state runner-up Briarwood was tabbed No. 2 after receiving four first-place votes. Cullman, Russellville and McAdory round out the top five, while Class 5A, Region 2 rival Charles Henderson is ranked No. 8 after a 12-1 season in 2007.

“I absolutely did not expect for us to be picked No. 1,” Klages said. “… It’s a great compliment to the players and teams that have played here before and we’ll do our best to live up to that.”

In 2007, Eufaula opened the season with a No. 3 ranking and finished the year with a 9-3 mark and advanced to the second round of the Alabama High School Association playoffs before being eliminated by UMS-Wright.

Just one season earlier the Tigers finished the season 14-1 and as the Class 5A runner-up to Athens after earning a No. 7 ranking in the ASWA preseason poll.

“It’s not where you start that matters,” Klages said. “It's where you finish that really matters. I’d much rather be No. 1 at the end of the season than No. 1 at the beginning.”

Regardless of the ranking, there’s plenty of work ahead for the Tigers who have holes to fill on both sides of the ball.

The Tigers graduated 18 seniors who led the Eufaula to a 34-5 record during the past three seasons – the most wins in a three-year span in school history – and a 23-1 record in region play during that same stretch.

Eufaula must also replace three starters that were not seniors bringing the total number of players lost off of last year’s roster to 21.

“I’m an optimistic person. We’ve got some spots to fill and we’re not exactly where we would like to be right now, but I think we’re going to get there,” Klages said after the Tigers’ first fall practice Monday. “We lost a lot of talent off last year’s team, but we’ve got some talent in this group. We just need some young guys, and guys that have been on the team but haven’t played a whole lot, to step up and fill some of those holes we have.”

Klages has been pleased with his team’s performance in the opening days of fall camp.

“I’ve been real pleased,” he said. “The pace of practice has been good. We don’t have a lot of guys standing around. Everyone is hustling and we haven’t had to take a lot of long breaks. The guys seem to be in good shape and that’s let us get a lot done in our time out there.”

According to Klages, who is entering his fifth season as the Tigers’ head coach and owns a 40-10 record at Eufaula, the offense has looked particularly sharp.

“We return our starting quarterback, which obviously makes a big difference,” he said. “Offensively we were able to jump right in there and run our base offense. (Monday) wasn’t like a first day of practice. We have a lot of our running backs back from last year and having run this same offense since middle school, they obviously know and understand what we want them to do. It went real smooth. We’re in much better shape offensively than we were at this point last year.”

Senior Zack Brown is slated to start at quarterback again this season, and will be joined in the backfield by seniors Javen Harris and Shaquille Ledbetter among others.

Eufaula had its first practice in full pads Thursday and will take part in a scrimmage today at 4 p.m.

Eufaula opens its 2008 campaign Aug. 29 at home against Class 6A Dothan at 7 p.m.

The Tigers will play a pre-season game with Lee County (Ga.) Aug. 21. Kickoff for that contest is set for 7 p.m. at Tiger Stadium.