By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Joseph Dupree is almost always smiling.

          Through struggles or after COVID or following a playoff season, the Southwest head football coach rarely has a frown.

          Even when the news isn’t good, Dupree avoids looking down.

          That outlook remained somewhat intact when discussing a huge change to the 2024 Patriots’ football team.

          Alas, the only Dupree who will apparently have an impact on the 2024 Patriots is not the one who has passed for more than 4,600 yards and 45 touchdowns the past two seasons.

          It’ll be the head coach.

          He confirmed on Wednesday that junior quarterback Chase is unlikely to take the field this season, courtesy of a broken hand suffered in mid-summer playing basketball.

“I haven’t said much,” said the head coach, a quarterback in his playing days at Southwest, Georgia, and Georgia Southern. “It’s a real bad bone bruise on his throwing hand.”

Southwest opens the season against Macon County on Friday at 5 p.m. in the Gridiron Classic at Fort Valley State.

          The Region 2-2A player of the year completed 60.9 percent of his passes last year for a Bibb County public high school record – according to Bibb County athletics - 2,545 yards, 25 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. He ran 22 times for 107 yards and scored three times.

          His passing yards total was good for 30th in the state last year in all classifications, according to MaxPreps, which is based on teams submitting information. And his completion percentage ranked 19th in that top 30.

          Dupree, the second-team all-region QB as a freshman, was third among Central Georgia quarterbacks in yards, behind Jones County’s Devin Edmonds (14th, 2,818) and Houston County’s A.J. Hill (16th, 2732) and just ahead of Perry’s Colter Ginn (34th, 2,457).

          As his football stock rose, so did his basketball stock during a busy and successful offseason for the 6-3 guard.

          The head coach estimated Chase to be out 6-8 weeks before he could start doing anything. Another two weeks of football work – Dupree said the bone affected the index finger more than any other part of the hand – would put the quarterback ready to play – barring setbacks – around the Oct. 25 game against Washington County, the Patriots’ ninth game of the season.

          Southwest has been working with sophomore Johnathan Hurley and junior Jamarian Leghorn at quarterback. Hurley threw one pass last year, and Leghorn played more on defense.

          There was some speculation that Dupree had decided to focus on basketball after that summer, and his dad thought a decision might’ve been a possibility at some point.

          The head coach knows the situation. He was the starting point guard on Southwest’s 1989 state championship team.

          “I thought about it when I was at Georgia,” Joseph Dupree said. “They actually wanted me to come out for basketball team. I decided against it.”

          Chase Dupree has a football offer from Georgia Southern, and basketball offers from Mercer and North Carolina A&T. It appears he’ll be fully ready by the time basketball rolls around, which might put him legitimately in a decision-making mode.