Don’t look too fast and read carefully.

The Richmond Hill Wildcats will not be going to Jesup to play Wayne County on the field on Friday.

Instead, they will be heading to Waynesboro to compete against Burke County.

The Wildcats game against Wayne County this week was cancelled.

So, they moved their Sept. 10 matchup against the Bears up a week to Sept. 3.

“We got news just after lunch on Monday that Wayne County schools cancelled all extracurricular activities,” Wildcats’ head coach Matt LeZotte said. “We got to thinking about it then I reached out to Coach (Eric) Parker up at Burke and said, ‘Who are y’all playing this week?’ He said nobody because their opponent cancelled on them also. So, I said, ‘Hey, what do you think about bumping this thing up a week to give both of us time to figure out next week to see what we can do?’ He agreed and it’s going to work out well for both parties.”

This will be the Wildcats’ second opportunity to get in the win column, sitting on an 0-1 record after losing at Beaufort in the season opener.

“We’ve taken the first game films and meshed them and saying, ‘Hey, what have we not been good at?’ We spent the majority of the time doing that last week. We also let these guys play a little bit. We came out Thursday with our full team and got on the game field to scrimmage one another. We had a fun day on Thursday working on some game situations. The way you get better at playing football is by playing football.”

The Burke County Bears will be playing their first game of the season against the Wildcats on Friday.

The last time the Wildcats took the field, they were missing 54 players due to close contact quarantine.

This number included their starting quarterback Ty Goldrick and his key target wide receiver Ravon Grant.

But that should not be the case this time around as the Wildcats are looking to have their team full throttle, coming off a bye week.

Last time out, the Wildcats were limited on their passing attack with freshman quarterback Caleb Easterling and sophomore quarterback Nick Bliss combining to throw five passes, completing four.

Strong safety Tommy Bliss will headline the defensive, having a blocked punt and a 95-yard kick return score in his first game of his senior year.

Linebackers Hayden McCullough, Kemorey Dobson, and Bodie Custer will also assist the defense along with Dontae Goodner anchoring the offensive line.

For the Bears, they are returning their starting quarterback from a season ago in junior Marshall Flowers, who threw for 1,112 passing yards and 12 touchdowns.

They also have Charlie Dorsey in the backfield, coming off 832 rushing yards and seven touchdowns in his sophomore year.

“I care way less about what they do and way more about what we do,” LeZotte said. “I told the guys, ‘It doesn’t matter who we play, let’s get better at being Richmond Hill.’” “We’re not going to cater anything of what we do to what other teams do. We’re going to get better at playing the positions that we play and developing team cohesion. Does it help to gameplan for an opponent? Absolutely. But when it comes down to it, after getting lined up correctly, you just execute the way that you’ve been coached to.”

The Bears compete in the GHSA 3A classification and are coming off a 3-6 season in 2020 before being eliminated by the eventual state champions Pierce County in the first round.

Historically though, the Bears have had their way with the Wildcats, holding an all-time 6-0 record over them with their last competition being in 2009.

So, there could be some history made if the Wildcats pull off the victory.

The game will kick off at 7:30 on Sept. 3 at Burke County.