By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor  It's a tale as old as time. The Thompson Warriors enter the 2025 season with one of the most difficult schedules in the state of Alabama.  That's because it's by design as head coach Mark Freeman actively seeks out the biggest challenges for his team for their non-region schedule. Even though the Warriors play in one of most difficult regions in Alabama, the level of their non-region opponents often match or exceed their regional rivals.  This year, Thompson will do the same with the No. 4 team in the country in Grayson, the 2023 Class 6A state champion in Clay-Chalkville and a borderline Class 7A playoff team in Carver-Montgomery.  First, the Warriors will open up the season at home against the Carver Wolverines on Thursday, Aug. 21 to raise the curtain on the Shelby County football season.  The Wolverines moved up to Class 7A last season as the result of a merger with Sidney Lanier. Carver fielded a strong team with an Under Armour All-American at running back in Ohio State signee Anthony Rogers and a Texas A&M signee at wide receiver in TK Norman.   However, the Wolverines fell short of the top half of the Class 7A, Region 2 standings on a tiebreaker to Enterprise, who Thompson would go on to face in the semifinals. Carver finished 6-3 on the year with notable wins over Vestavia Hills and Opelika bookending the season.  The Wolverines lost both stars to graduation and their coach in Bobby Carr to Prattville, so Mario White now steps into just his second head coaching role.  Thompson and Carver have faced each other twice before, in 2000 and 2001 when they shared Class 6A, Region 4. The Warriors won both games, which came during a 34-game losing streak for the Wolverines.   Thompson will hope to get a big result here to kick off the season and iron out some wrinkles before a massive test in Week 2.  That will come in the form of the Grayson Rams, last year's Class AAAAAA (6A) champion in Georgia. The back half of the two-year series will come on Aug. 29 in Loganville, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta.  Last year, the Rams and Warriors squared off in a classic on ESPN2 airwaves. It came down to overtime, and a decision to go for two from Grayson paid off in a 15-14 victory. That ended up being one of three one-point overtime losses for Thompson in the regular season.  That gave the Rams their first win of the year and sparked a 14-game win streak that they carried all the way through Mercedes-Benz Stadium to defeat Carrollton and USC commit Julian Lewis in the state championship game.  Notably, this will actually be Grayson's Week 3 game. Georgia's season starts a week earlier than Alabama's, so the Rams will have already faced a gauntlet of Collins Hill, their lone loss last year that they avenged in the semifinals, and North Carolina Division I private school champion Rabun Gap before they play Thompson. The Rams will also host North Carolina power Mallard Creek in Week 4 before region play begins.  That extra game combined with a much longer time practicing in pads has long been blamed for the gap between Georgia and Alabama teams, but regardless of that, it should be a true clash of each state's best. Thompson enters the year as Alabama's top-ranked team at No. 24 in the MaxPreps poll while Grayson is No. 4, meaning if both teams take care of business to start the year, we'll have a rare national top 25 matchup on our hands.  After that, the Warriors will begin region play at home when they host the Tuscaloosa County Wildcats on Sept. 5.  Thompson continued its historical dominance against Tuscaloosa County last year with a 47-7 win on the road that extended its series lead to 11-3 all-time. The Wildcats will have a new look going into this year under a man who Warriors fans will recall–former Oak Mountain boss Cris Bell.  Thompson will have a good chance to start off region play 1-0 against a team that has been in turmoil all offseason long and historically struggled against the Warriors.  Then, Thompson will take its first in-state road trip of the season, and it'll be one of its shortest ones as it heads to Heardmont Park to face the Oak Mountain Eagles on Sept. 12.  The Warriors put the pedal to the metal in this game last year, racing ahead to a double-digit lead while the defensive starters pitched a shutout while they were in the game. Thompson secured a 42-7 win in the game to improve to 13-9 all-time against the Eagles.  The Warriors will seek to extend their nine-game win streak over Oak Mountain as they prep for a challenging region slate to come.  Those challenges will begin in earnest on Sept. 19 when Thompson hosts the Vestavia Hills Rebels.  The Warriors went into Reynolds Stadium last year and emerged with a 38-17 victory that set them up for success the rest of the way in region play.  The Rebels are no team to overlook though. They have made the playoffs in each of the three seasons that Robert Evans has coached them and will be battle tested coming into this matchup after facing South Carolina's Westside, Auburn High School, Hewitt-Trussville and Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa in their first four matchups.  That game will be Thompson's final game of the opening half of region play, but the non-region break won't be much of a break for the Warriors. They will face off against the Clay-Chalkville Cougars on the road on Sept. 26.  This will actually be Thompson's first trip to Clay-Chalkville since 1999. The two teams were originally set to play at the home of the Cougars in 2023, but ESPN picking up the matchup meant that the game needed to be moved to Warrior Stadium since Cougar Stadium couldn't accommodate a national TV production crew.  Clay-Chalkville secured its second-straight win over the Warriors and fourth in five all-time meetings last year in a 14-13 defensive battle that came down to overtime. The Cougars did not go on to defend their Class 6A state title after that and lost to Muscle Shoals in a second-round upset.  Coach Stuart Floyd's team should be well-equipped to face Thompson's challenging defense with Aaron Frye leading the way and a newcomer at receiver in former Spain Park Back of the Year finalist Corey Barber, an Ole Miss commit.  The Warriors will want to remain fresh coming out of that game for a difficult back half of region play. That slate starts on Oct. 3 when they travel north of Birmingham once again to face the Hewitt-Trussville Huskies.  Thompson faced another stiff test from perennial state title contenders Hewitt last year when it secured a 15-10 win at home in dramatic fashion. That extended the all-time series lead to 12-6 as a result of the Warriors' seventh-straight win over the Huskies.  The two teams will likely once again be jockeying for playoff positioning in Class 7A, Region 3 once again, so expect another high-profile matchup that could determine where each team starts their journey in November.  Afterwards, Thompson will head back home for its fourth and final home game of the regular season against the Hillcrest Patriots out of Tuscaloosa on Oct. 10.  Last year was the first time the two teams met since 2017 as a result of Hillcrest moving into Region 3 alongside Prattville. Thompson's offense put on a show in a 45-20 victory during their first regional meeting since 2007.  Hillcrest missed out on the playoffs last year with a 6-4 record after falling a game behind Vestavia Hills in the standings. However, a solid core under head coach Jamie Mitchell has the Patriots receiving low-end top-10 buzz from the preseason polls.  It may not be enough to break through into the playoffs in a region with the likelihood of four top-10 teams in it, but that would still make Hillcrest a potential trap in between two massive regional tilts.  After they get past the Patriots, the Warriors will play one of their most anticipated games of the season against the rival Hoover Buccaneers on Oct. 17 at the Hoover Met.  While their 2023 meeting didn't have the usual stakes attached to it, last year was another region title game per usual. Thompson rallied late to tie the game but once again fell by one point in overtime, this time by a score of 27-26.  Last year's loss to the Bucs significantly complicated the Warriors' path to Birmingham as they needed to go to No. 1 Auburn High School in the second round as a result of earning the No. 2 seed instead of the No. 1 seed. That makes winning this one against another loaded Hoover team even more important.  From there, Thompson will finish out the regular season with its longest in-state road trip of the season. The Warriors will head south down I-65 to Prattville to face the Lions in their newly renovated stadium on Oct. 24.  This will be their first trip to Prattville since 2012, when the Lions were fresh off their 2011 Class 6A state championship. Thompson has historically struggled against Prattville, going 5-9 all-time, but they've only met one time in the Mark Freeman era when the Warriors started their dramatic turnaround to perennial title contenders.  Last year's meeting was a 42-7 victory for the Warriors in a bit of a get-right game following the loss to Hoover. Prattville enters the season with a new head coach in Bobby Carr from Carver-Montgomery, so the Lions will look to turn the ship around before this Week 10 clash.  This matchup could once again be a chance for Thompson to generate crucial momentum ahead of the playoff run.  Afterwards, the Warriors will have Halloween night off as they prepare for what they hope is a ninth-straight trip to the postseason and a chance to win their sixth state title in seven years.

Read more at: https://www.shelbycountyreporter.com/2025/07/24/thompson-schedule-breakdown-warriors-prep-for-another-challenging-slate/