Forty days and forty nights.

That's how long you'll have to wait until you pack up your stadium seats, hop in the car and follow the lights to your first high school football game of the year.

You can bet this season will be worth the wait.

We'll soon see whether Ashbrook wide receiver Jheranie Boyd can live up to the hype. We'll also find out if the South Point Red Raiders are as loaded as they appear to be.

How will Lincolnton follow up on its state championship? What can we expect from an almost completely new North Gaston team after the Wildcats turned in the best season in school history? Can Mark Latham turn around West Lincoln just as he did East Gaston?

Those are some topics to debate as the season draws near.

Practice begins on a Friday this year - on Aug. 1. Scrimmages begin Aug. 12. Opening night is right around the corner on Aug. 22.

The schedule makers came up with a dandy of an opener this season as South Point travels to Clover on Aug. 22 in a battle of two of the area's strongest programs. (That's South Point without the "e" at the end - the one in Belmont. Clover will also host the South Pointe from Rock Hill, S.C., later in the season)

South Point will probably be the favorite in the Big South 3A/4A Conference this season. And it seems like Clover is always primed for a run. We'll find a lot about these two teams in a hurry.

The Red Raiders scheduled Clover in place of Charlotte Latin and as a result will have their open date in Week 10.

Most schedules remain the same as last year, with the exception of reversing the site for each game. This will be the last year of the current alignment, which means schedules will change dramatically next fall.

In the other few schedule changes, East Lincoln, North Lincoln and Highland Tech all picked up Northern Guilford. To make room, East Lincoln dropped Charlotte Christian while North Lincoln took the now-defunct Mount Zion off the schedule.

Highland Tech also added Raleigh Royal and Kennedy Charter while dropping Cherokee, Fayetteville Christian, Westminster Catawba and Harrells Christian.

Go ahead and memorize the schedules we're providing in today's paper and circle the big-time games you can't wait to see. They're not far away.

GASTONIA - Pat Dixon thought he was good to go.

North Carolina A&T State University had offered him a scholarship to play football, and he liked the school enough that he felt no need to explore other options.

Next thing he knew, A&T had stopped calling him, signing day had passed and his scholarship was no longer waiting for him.

Without a backup plan, he was out of luck.

Although Dixon won't enroll in college this fall, he hasn't given up on his hopes of playing collegiate football. His optimism lies in a tiny postgraduate school in Gastonia designed for football players just like him.

Carolina Prep School was formed out of the what was once Prince Avenue North and Mount Zion private high schools. Athletic director and head football coach Jason Thomas felt he could best serve the community by turning his program into a team for postgraduates who want a second chance at a college scholarship.

So far, the team has drawn plenty of interest in its first offseason. Thirty players had joined the team before the start of minicamp last week and more are expected.

"There's three reasons they're usually here," Thomas said. "They didn't get recruited, they got hurt last year or it was their test scores.

"This is something that's been needed around here because a lot of kids haven't been able to go on to the next level."

Dixon didn't get hurt and his test scores were fine, but N.C. A&T coaches stopped recruiting him when he thought a scholarship was in the bag.

He started two years at quarterback for Olympic High School in Charlotte. His team got a new coach his senior year and Dixon went from running a spread offense to a Wing-T, which features a strong running game.

He blames his sharp decrease in passing yardage for giving N.C. A&T coaches second thoughts.

"All during my senior year they were calling me," he said. "The end of the season came and that was it."

Carolina Prep will run a spread offense this fall, and Dixon believes college coaches will take notice if he turns in a solid season.

Tyree Watkins is also playing at Carolina Prep with the hope of attracting college coaches. The 6-foot-2, 230-pound defensive end from East Lincoln High School said nobody told him about the NCAA's eligibility requirements until it was too late. He didn't take the SAT until March.

"By then, everybody had gotten their teams filled out," he said.

Casey Collins, a wide receiver from South Caldwell High School, is a late bloomer. He skipped football his first three years of high school while he focused on basketball.

"I decided I should have been playing football all through high school," Collins said.

East Carolina didn't accept him on his academic merits, so he's signed up for Carolina Prep's SAT course.

Thomas says he hasn't guaranteed any of his players a scholarship, but they believe playing for him can only help.

"Coach said as long as we work hard for him, he'll work hard for us," Dixon said.

Team members must pay $1,000 to play football. The SAT preparatory class, taught by a retired school administrator, costs $180 per month. School enrollment is $100 per month. Carolina Prep orders its curriculum from Lifepac. If a student needs to take a core class, Carolina Prep sends him to Gaston College.

The Warriors, who practice at the Phillips Center off Hudson Boulevard in Gastonia, open their 10-game schedule Aug. 23. Opponents on the schedule include Louisburg College, Methodist College, N.C. Tech, Prince Avenue Prep and Jireh Prep. The team will play most of its games on Saturdays and plans to play its six home games at Kings Mountain High School.

Although most of Carolina Prep's players come from Charlotte, two former Kings Mountain players are on the roster: Offensive lineman Desmond Thompson and linebacker Lamar Womic. Former Hunter Huss lineman Aundra Fonville is also on the team.

For them, it's the nearest prep school option. The next closest is N.C. Tech in Charlotte.

"This is going to help kids more than me having a private high school," said Thomas, a former assistant public high school coach in Gaston County. "We're trying to get the high school coaches on board."

GASTONIA - Can't high school coaches decide for themselves which opponents their teams should play?

That's my first complaint about a new policy approved by Gaston County's athletic directors on April 3.

In case you haven't heard, Gaston County Schools' high school athletic directors voted unanimously to ban the scheduling of private schools in all sports. The policy will go into effect as soon as county athletic director Butch Adams gains approval from each high school principal.

The primary issue, the athletic directors say, is that private schools and public schools play by different rules. They claim private schools recruit athletes and reclassify them, allowing them to repeat a grade.

I understand their concerns, but isn't a blanket policy a bit over the top?

If Hunter Huss wants to play Gaston Day in basketball, give the Huskies the chance. If South Point wants to schedule Charlotte Latin next football season, why is that a problem?

A coach should be able to determine which opponents are best for his program without limitation by an unfair policy. Sometimes, private schools actually offer stronger competition than a coach can find otherwise and this benefits the team in the long run.

The rule as it stands now would eliminate competition against not only Gaston County private schools, but all private schools.

Let's just be honest about it, though, and call it what it is: The Gaston Day rule.

Recruiting and reclassification was a serious problem with Gaston Day basketball a few years ago. But it no longer seems to the issue that it was.

I hear the same recruiting allegations everyone else hears, and I'm not so naïve as to believe there's no recruiting going on, but we all know recruiting done well is nearly impossible to prove.

And for the record, I believe holding open gym on Sundays is crossing the recruiting line even if it does provide a wholesome atmosphere for local kids.

But if Gaston Day is recruiting local kids from their districted high schools, then they must not be recruiting very effectively. Exactly how many former Gaston County Schools athletes do you see playing with the Spartans this year? Not many. In fact, if schools are worried about their kids being recruited away from their program, they need look no further than their rival public schools.

But for some reason, the public school athletic directors feel that every time they play Gaston Day, it provides the Spartans a recruiting opportunity - even moreso if the game takes place at Gaston Day, where the players can get a glimpse of their sometimes superior facilities.

It seems to me that there's a deeply ingrained perception in this area that will take a long time to change.

Want an example of how stubborn our local athletic directors have been about this issue?

They met with Gaston Day athletic director Kevin Sims and headmaster Richard Rankin in Dec. 2005 to discuss their concerns about alleged recruiting, reclassification and the awarding of athletic scholarships.

According to Sims, the "discussion" wasn't a discussion at all.

"We were talked to and there wasn't much talking with, at least not at that particular meeting," Sims said.

In other words, some of the athletic directors haven't handled the matter as professionally as they might have.

Before this past week, nobody would admit on the record to the existence of an unwritten rule that disallowed Gaston County Schools from playing against Gaston Day.

The rule led to some abruptly canceled games. In the fall of 2005, Gaston Day's volleyball schedule shrank from 14 to 10 games because the public schools couldn't play Gaston Day, Sims said. Some of the games were canceled only a few hours before they were to be contested, he added.

As far as I can tell, Gaston County athletic directors made no attempt to contact Gaston Day or any other private school one last time before voting earlier this month. During the discussion, nobody raised the slightest opposition or even played devil's advocate. They had already made up their minds.

Can't their concerns be addressed in other ways?

I thought it was great when the Gaston Day and Hunter Huss boys basketball teams played in Bobcats Arena in February. I thought the event would be the first of many Gaston Day vs. Gaston County games to come. I guess I was wrong.

Even if you believe the playing field isn't level between public and private schools, keep in mind we're talking about non-conference games.

Very seldom do Gaston County public schools face private schools in the playoffs (although Cherryville has a right to gripe about the charter school Winston-Salem being in the Class 1A).

Speaking of griping, we better not hear any when a local school has to travel 90 minutes to face quality competition when it could have scheduled a private school in Gaston County or Charlotte.