At 3:40 in the morning on the 18th of May, Dean Jarvis slid his 52-year-old body into the Fort Sanders Health and Fitness Center swimming pool in Knoxville and began to dog paddle for what would become an 18-hour workout covering 16 miles.

The names have changed, but the expectations for McCallie's football program have not.

Moc Valley Prep, a postgraduate school that will open later this year, is intended to provide another opportunity for area basketball players to be recruited. That's Trey Suttles' plan.

For more than a decade, the Chattanooga area has had a run of small-school success unparalleled in Tennessee prep football.

Gui Vivaldini is now on an exclusive but growing list of McCallie soccer stars who have been named Tennessee's best player by Gatorade.

With summer camps in full swing, high school football players are making their final push to attract college recruiters before the season begins in two months.

Ridgeland offensive lineman Jacob Klein is one example from the Chattanooga area of the impact so-called "mega" football camps on college campuses can have on a recruit's profile. Calhoun receiver and defensive back Cole Speer is another.

Three months into this calendar year the number of head coaching changes among area prep football programs was relatively low compared with the typical annual turnover.

The most common route from Baylor School to Auburn University involves Interstate 75 and Interstate 85.

Few prep teams have dominated region competition quite like Meigs County football the past four seasons. The Tigers claimed 16 consecutive wins over league foes and used the four straight region titles as a springboard into the playoffs, where they reached the Class 2A state championship game the last two years and the semifinals the season before that.

There was nothing routine about the 2020 high school football season in Tennessee.

If ever the phrase "addition by subtraction" applied to prep sports, it is the recent decision by Grace Baptist Academy to make the transition from 11-man to eight-man football.

When the Spring Fling wrapped up a little more than a week ago, it marked the end of the Chattanooga area's prep sports season for the 2020-21 school year. It also meant the clock started on the countdown to the next prep season.

For 13 years, Tyrus Ward just worked. Just grinded. He didn't always know what he was working and grinding toward; he just knew he needed to keep on doing it.

Tennessee's semifinal showdown Saturday afternoon against Florida in the SEC baseball tournament did not go as planned for Volunteers coach Tony Vitello, and he was thrilled with that.

Historically, there has been a dearth of minority, in particular Black, head coaches and players in successful programs in the Chattanooga area's high school tennis scene.

As this year's Spring Fling comes to a close, one thing is clear: We all missed this.

In a 2021 softball season that was anything but ordinary, with COVID-19 protocols and the all-too-clear memory of having lost so much just one year ago, Baylor made it look routine.

Vytas Valincius may not have been around for the Baylor School baseball class of 2021's first two state championships, but the 6-foot-4, 235-pound senior sure left his mark helping the Red Raiders capture a third straight TSSAA Division II-AA title.

Jacob Johnson was practically born with a tennis racket in his crib, but when he was old enough to actually start playing sports, he was more drawn to the baseball diamond than the court.

Red Bank's softball team fought its way to the state tournament in a challenging season, but that run ended Thursday.

McMinn Central's administration wasted little time finding its next football coach.

Baylor's next state titles are on deck.