Beginning this week, all prep football games for the rest of the season will begin at 7:00 p.m., and not the customary 7:30.

This year, the Mississippi High School Activities Association mandated that all football games after Oct.1 and through the remainder of the regular season and playoffs must begin at 7 p.m.

This comes on the heels of at least a half-decade of teams being able to decide on the starting times of their home games, be it 7 p.m., or 7:30 p.m.

Locally, most schools have traditionally always had a 7:30 kickoff for home games. However, several schools on the Gulf Coast changed to a 7 p.m., kickoff over the past few years, creating a bit of controversy at times for schools in Region 8-4A..

“I don’t know if it will make that big a difference, it’s just something you have to get used to because you don’t have a choice,” Picayune head coach and Athletics Coordinator Dodd Lee, whose team travels to Poplarville this week, said, earlier this year. “Thirty minutes definitely makes a difference in September with the heat. After that, who knows. I guess the one thing it might do is get you into a rhythm for playing at 7 going into the playoffs.”

For most of the past decade, all playoff games had already been moved to a 7 p.m., start by the MHSAA.

Also locally this week, Pearl River Central hosts Bay High for Homecoming and Hancock is at Pascagoula.