By CURTIS ROCKWELL

Item Sports Editor

Once reclassification was finished, it didn’t take Picayune head football coach Dodd Lee long to complete his schedule for next season.

Lee confirmed this week that his teams slate for next season had been set, and it features several schools the Maroon Tide has never met in the regular season and a few more they’ve never faced before at all. Also, it includes swapping one state-wide perennial power for yet another to face in the regular season finale.

The Tide will have just three non-league games, due to a mandated open date by the MHSAA. That portion of the schedule will have a somewhat familiar ring to it, as the Maroon Tide will open the season against Moss Point for the seventh straight season. The Maroon Tide will play at Pascagoula three weeks later to complete its pre-league slate, marking the first time in eight years Picayune will play at War Memorial Stadium

In between those two games will be the open date as well as a first ever meeting with Forrest County AHS, also on the road.

After the Pascagoula game, the Tide will travel to McComb to open Region 3-5A play.

Picayune then hosts Forest Hill, which will be a rematch of the game the Tide won at home this past season to open the state playoffs, and then the Tide will travel to Stone High for the first time.

The final four games of the regular season features three home games and a stretch that will be one of the toughest in the state as the Tide hosts Brookhaven and Pearl River Central before travelling to West Jones and returning home for a date with Wayne County to wrap up the regular season. Wayne County replaces D’Iberville in that spot.

The Tide had a non-league game with Gulfport planned, but the mandated open date policy caused that game to be dropped