No excuses. First-year Palisades High kicks off football season with ‘Midnight Madness’
You only get one chance to start new, and at Palisades High School, Jonathan Simmons wasn’t going to waste it.
Simmons is the head coach at Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s newest high school, and Simmons — and his players — didn’t want to wait any longer than necessary to officially kick off the 2022 football season. Monday was the official start of the athletic year and Palisades hit the field at 12:01 a.m., as soon as Sunday night turned into Monday morning.
“I think the excitement is really high,” Simmons said. “People made sacrifices to be here and anytime people make a sacrifice there has got to be excitement. I think this is an exciting community, an exciting group of kids, and excited coaches. So, I am happy where we are at right now.”
Simmons, formerly an assistant coach under Matt Jenkins at Hough, wanted to do something that was radically different from other schools in CMS, and to his knowledge, no other school in the district was hosting a midnight practice.
“It really stems from college basketball,” Simmons noted. “Some of these things trickle down to the high school level and I have seen some high schools do some midnight practices to kind of bring excitement. I haven’t seen it in the Charlotte area, I can’t lie. I might be misspeaking, but I thought it would be something great for our kids.”
One player that coach Simmons will look to lean on during the course of the season will be quarterback Jarek Patulski. Patulski was formerly at Olympic High and will look to bring knowledge and experience to his new program.
He also has lofty expectations of himself heading into the season. Patulski’s goal is to be one of the top quarterbacks in North Carolina. Doing so will be a challenge on a first-year team, but it is one that he feels is obtainable.
“It’s definitely fun being a new program,” Patulski said. “Being a new program and having all the accolades of being the first players out there. Coach Simmons is great. He is a great coach for this program. He wants perfection with everything and that is what we need right now.”
Patulski is a junior, and will be one of the Pumas’ oldest players. Palisades will not have any seniors in this first season. Simmons, however, doesn’t think that should matter in terms of wins and losses.
Palisades doesn’t have a lot of time to get to know each other and get ready. The Pumas open the season Aug. 19 at West Meck and have a schedule that includes games against perennial powers Myers Park and Charlotte Catholic.
“Young is not an excuse,” Simmons said. “We are a young program with young kids, but young is not an excuse. We can’t make that an excuse as to why we can’t be successful. So, we literally have to focus on the details and accept to love discipline, and not in the form of punishment, more so doing everything right. So that’s it.”
PHOTOS: Palisades first practice
This story was originally published August 1, 2022 at 8:26 AM.