Stiles: 5 football games to watch for this fall

In six short weeks, the pads will be crackling, the bands playing and the masses cheering under the Friday night lights in Robeson County.

It’s an even shorter time — less than three weeks now — before official practice begins for the 2024 season.

Every game that I will cover this fall is one that I look forward to witnessing. But a few rise to the top of list as games to watch.

Listed chronologically, here are five local games to circle on the calendar.

Aug. 23: Purnell Swett at St. Pauls

Season-opening games always provide excitement and fun after literally a months-long buildup. Robeson County has seen Fairmont and Lumberton open their seasons against each other the last three years, but a new in-county game will be added to this year’s Week 1 slate as Purnell Swett travels to St. Pauls.

This game matches up the county’s two best teams from last season, with the Purnell Swett program bringing some momentum into Josh Deese’s second season as head coach after a big improvement in 2023. St. Pauls has been the county’s best team throughout the 2020s thus far. This should be a competitive game, and one that will be mutually beneficial and help both teams to get better as they progress into the rest of their seasons.

The teams were supposed to play in 2021, but the game was unable to happen due to COVID-19 protocols. Thus, this fall’s game will be the first meeting in 14 years; Purnell Swett won all six matchups when the teams met from 2005-10.

Sept. 13: Lumberton at Red Springs

Last year’s matchup between the Pirates and Red Devils was, remarkably, the first meeting between the schools on a football field. Unfortunately, it became historic in other ways as parking lot gunfire interrupted the game, ultimately leading to a Saturday finish with no fans in the stands at Alton G. Brooks Stadium.

That game became dramatic on the field as well when it was able to resume, with Red Springs stopping Lumberton on a late two-point try to hold on for a 19-18 win. As the teams meet again this season in Lumberton’s first time playing at Red Springs, hopefully fans will get to see a full 48 minutes of football this time, and perhaps the game can once again come down to the final few plays.

This is the third game of Taurius Baker’s first season as Lumberton head coach, so we’ll still be getting used to seeing what his team looks like on the field. Red Springs will be looking to repeat last year’s on-field outcome as the Red Devils seek to continue improving after a five-win 2023 season.

Oct. 4: Red Springs at Fairmont

Some may be surprised to see this game mentioned, but in addition to wanting to include each Robeson County school on this list, I can also include it here because it is legitimately a game I look forward to each year. That’s due to its status as an in-county and in-conference matchup between the Red Devils and Golden Tornadoes, and also because of some of the games that have happened in this series.

Red Springs has won four of the last five meetings, but the teams have split the last 10. This includes a couple of defensive games I’ve personally covered — a 16-6 outcome in 2023 and an 18-8 decision in 2019, both won by Red Springs — as well as a back-and-forth 34-30 affair in 2022, also won by the Red Devils. Blowouts in the spring and fall 2021 seasons, one won by each team, are an outlier, with the other seven out of the previous nine meetings all decided by 10 points or less.

This year, the game is the Southeastern Athletic Conference opener for both squads. Fairmont will seek improvement this fall in its second season under coach Jeremy Carthen; Red Springs could potentially be a dark horse team in the Southeastern, but can’t drop this contest if it wants to be competitive in the standings.

Oct. 25: St. Pauls at Clinton

With the North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s realignment looming after the 2024-25 school year, this season could potentially be the last time (at least for now) that St. Pauls and Clinton are conference opponents. Through the first three years of the current alignment, they’ve met with first place in the Southeastern Athletic Conference on the line each season, and each time the victor has ultimately won the conference title.

St. Pauls won 58-32 in 2021 after Kemarion Baldwin’s historic 409-yard, six-touchdown rushing performance; Clinton rebounded for a 23-20 win in 2022, taking the lead on a hook-and-lateral with less than two minutes to play. The Dark Horses dominated 50-16 last season on their way to a 2A state runner-up finish.

This season’s matchup will look different, though, with a coaching change and a new-look roster at Clinton and St. Pauls set to field quite possibly its best team since its last conference champion in the fall of 2021. At any rate, there’s a very good chance that this game will, once again, have very high stakes, and it will come in the next-to-last game of the season for both clubs.

Nov. 1: Lumberton at Purnell Swett

The county’s biggest rivalry is always a must-see contest, and each of the four games between the two programs that I’ve covered have been close games that came down to the wire. That it’s been the regular-season finale each year only adds to the emotions of the series.

Each time I’ve previously written this column ahead of a season, it’s been with both programs coming off tough seasons, and I’ve said something to the effect of “perhaps one or both teams can have a breakthrough season and this game will have playoff implications this year.” Last year, that happened, with Purnell Swett winning five games and needing a win — or so we thought — to solidify a 4A state playoff berth, and Lumberton upsetting the Rams 15-12 to play the apparent spoiler, ending a three-game Rams winning streak in the series. (Purnell Swett was ultimately the last team in the field after a nerve-racking 18 or so hours following the loss.)

This year, Lumberton coach Taurius Baker will participate in the rivalry as a head coach for the first time, though he’s no stranger to the series as a former Pirates assistant. His team will face a Rams squad that surely hasn’t forgotten about last year’s loss, while Lumberton looks to win consecutive games against Purnell Swett for the first time since 2014-15.