Fountain Lake 7-on-7 kicks off summer activities

FOUNTAIN LAKE — After over 20 years of hosting its annual 7-on-7 football tournament at the end of the summer, Fountain Lake will be hosting its 23rd annual event Friday at Allen Tillery Field, becoming the first 7-on-7 event in the state.

“It was at the end of the summer,” Fountain Lake head coach J.D. Plumlee said. “When (former Cobras head coach) Tommy (Gilleran) and (Fountain Lake athletic director) Marc (Davis) started that 20 years ago, they always did it at the end of the summer. I got with Marc, and we wanted to be the first one in the state this year. It’s this Friday, so it’ll be the first 7-on-7 in Arkansas to kick off the summer activities.”

Fountain Lake head coach J.D. Plumlee said the primary reason for the change was due to a rule change by the Arkansas Activities Association limiting the number of summer activities a team can take part in each summer.

“We wanted to try to get a lot of good times right out of the gate when everything is excited and ready to roll and kind of change it up,” he said. “With the new AAA rule that they’ve put on everybody, everybody’s schedule is going to be a lot more detailed with what coaches want to get out of what camps because you only have eight days to compete. We wanted to move it because I felt like if we waited until the end of summer, some teams might be out of those days of competition, and we might miss out on some of those teams.”

With teams limited to eight events in the summer, Plumlee decided to make a change to the annual event’s format as well. This year, five schools will be participating in the 10-team event with each school bringing its own junior varsity squad to compete.

“What we’ve done is, because of that AAA competition rule, we set it up so they could bring their JV team as well to get everybody some reps,” he explained. “It’s a 10-team tournament, and that includes everybody’s JV.

“I think a lot of teams are looking for that right now because that way, if they’re going to load up and go, they might as well make a day of it and get everybody on their team some reps. We kind of did that. We initially had some other teams in there that didn’t want to do that, so we kept it like this. All the head coaches seemed excited to be able to play their JVs.”

In addition to the shift to the first part of the summer, the event

will be held on Friday instead of Saturday to keep from competing with prospect camps across the state.

“We moved it to Friday because of that,” Plumlee noted. “A lot of these summer camps now are on the weekends. This Saturday, June 2, is the big Natural State Elite Camp at War Memorial. There will be 500–600 athletes competing in that. We have four of our own from Fountain Lake are going.

“It’s kind of hard to put them on the weekend because you try and stay off those camp dates so your kids can go compete at those prospect camps. With it being a Friday, I don’t think it will affect attendance as far as spectators coming to watch. The summer seems to get shorter and shorter each year, and you have to pick a date and stick with it.”

With the new format and timing, the Allen Tillery Auto-Fountain Lake 7-on-7 Tournament has drawn in two schools that had never competed in the tournament in the past.

“Little Rock Central is coming for the first time, and Shiloh Christian is coming down for the first time,” Plumlee said. “This will be their first-ever trip to Fountain Lake. Lake Hamilton is coming, along with Poyen and Joe T. Robinson.”

This weekend’s event kicks off at 9 a.m. with pool play. With two pools, each team will play four games before breaking for lunch; the single-elimination tournament will then start around 2:30 p.m.

Games are set for 20 minutes with a non-stop clock with five minutes between each game. Standard 7-on-7 rules will apply with a quarterback, center and five recievers on offense with seven backs and linebackers on defense for the touch tackle, pass-only competition. Field length is 40 yards with 15 yards for first downs.

The concession stand will be open for fans and athletes. Admission is free. Herff Jones/ Grads and Rings is sponsoring the awards for the teams.