Plant High School will play their first out of state game for the 2016 football season. The game will be played at Ladd Peebles Stadium, site of the College Football Senior Bowl, in Mobile, Alabama.

“It’s very complicated to make an out of state game work. Before this game, we had another game set up but the other team pulled out of it,” Robert Weiner, head football coach, said.

Weiner explained that he learned about the opportunity of the Alabama game from his good friend, Ronnie Cottrell. Plant will play Paul W. Bryant High School, a team from Tuscaloosa, in Mobile, AL at the Mobile Bay Grid Iron Challenge.

“I think the out of state game will be enriching because I will bond with my team and we will destroy Paul W. Bryant’s team,” Bryce Jenkins, senior, said.

Jenkins said that the out of state tradition has occurred for a long time, but this is the team’s first year playing at the Mobile Challenge.

“We know most of the tri-county teams, but we don’t know any teams from Alabama,” Kyle Trina, senior, said.

Trina said that before all the big games and once the team did warm ups, the spotlight goes to Coach Weiner and his pump up speech.

“My game day ritual is not having my phone. This is so I can keep my focus and not get distracted from my job as Quarterback,” Dane Frantzen, senior, said.

Frantzen also said that before games, he likes to go out onto the field and ‘dance a little bit.’

“Before the game, I sometimes write stuff on my arm like Rex ’17, [which I wrote] when my brother was injured last year,” Judge Culpepper, junior, said.

Culpepper said that he did not know what he will write this year but it will be something interesting.

“I think before our games our team pump up song is “Wildboy” by Waka Floka,” Clay Hancher, junior, said.

Hancher said the team has been hard at work in all of the practices and they have been working on learning their plays.

“I think that it will just be fun because we will travel as a team and all of our goals’ is to definitely win because we haven’t won an out of state game in a while,” Thomas Allen, senior, said.

The team leaves Friday and will take a bus to Mobile, AL and will play their game on August 27, at 6 p.m.