Football
Preview Magazine Coming Soon
By
Bonita Wilborn
The much anticipated 6th annual Mountain River Valley Football Preview Magazine, coming soon, will be yet another first, for our loyal readers, as we will now be including all of the high schools, with football teams, in both DeKalb and Jackson counties.
Our
first Football Preview Magazine came out in 2014. While other media outlets were publishing a
football preview of sorts, ours was the first of its kind in this area. Any attention to the upcoming football season
came in the form of articles in the newspaper about new coaches and schedules
for the upcoming year. However, the
Mountain Valley News 2014 Football Preview set the bar, in this area, with a 66
page, full-color magazine that included not only individual shots of each
player on each team but also group photos of the coaching staff and the cheerleading
squad from each school. It also included highlights from the coaches about
anticipation for the upcoming season and articles about the local sports hall
of greats.
The
2014 Football Preview Magazine proved to be very popular, so we kept the same
format for the 2015 edition, but in 2016 we added full-color backgrounds [the
individual school colors] on the individual photo pages and added feature
player interviews for each school.
The
2017 Football Preview Magazine saw yet another positive addition as feature
cheerleader, and mascot interviews were also included. The 2018 Football Preview Magazine continued
that format and also brought back to life the famed “Bum Pickins”, a much-loved
character that wrote for the Weekly Post, which is a former publication from
the Rainsville area.
More
improvements are on the horizon for the 2019 Football Preview Magazine that is
coming out near the end of August (at the beginning of the 2019 football
season). This year’s edition will have
textured backgrounds and will be the first edition to carry the name Mountain
River Valley Football Preview.
The
reason for the name change is due to the addition of our secondary newspaper,
North Jackson Press, that we started printing in February 2019. While the previous Football Preview Magazines
have included Pisgah, Section, and North Sand Mountain high schools, all from
Jackson County, we are very excited to be including North Jackson, Woodville,
and Scottsboro high schools in this year’s edition. That brings the total
number of schools in this year’s magazine to 16: Collinsville, Cornerstone Christian Academy,
Crossville, Fort Payne, Fyffe, Geraldine, Ider, North Jackson, North Sand
Mountain, Pisgah, Plainview, Scottsboro, Section, Sylvania, Valley Head, and
Woodville. (Skyline does not have a football team.)
With the addition of the other Jackson County Schools, available space has made it necessary to eliminate the player, cheerleader, and mascot interviews, but we will still have the ever-popular coach interviews.
I
know you will be as excited as we are to get your copy of the 2019 Football
Preview Magazine, and will want to put it back as a memento for your child or
grandchild. As always, the magazines
that we publish are free to our subscribers.
Just be looking for the announcement in the newspaper that the magazine
is back, then stop by one of our offices and get your copy before we run
out. Our Rainsville office is located at
450 Main Street West (directly across the street from the Tech School), and the
Stevenson office is located at 42950 Hwy 72 Suite 406 (in the Foodland Shopping
Center). If you are not yet a
subscriber, the cost for the magazine is $5 each.
The
cost for a 6-month subscription (August – February when our subscriptions come
due again) is $15/57¢ per copy (or $12/48¢ per copy, for senior citizen rate). While you’re at one of our offices to pick up
your magazine, you could subscribe to have the newspaper delivered to your home
for almost half the newsstand price and still get the Football Preview Magazine
free.
