The long, hot, hard work is almost over, and the fun is set to begin.

For most of the area’s high school football teams, the long offseason ends on Friday night, as they take the field for their first regular season games.

Only a handful of teams won’t be playing this Friday night.

The Louisiana public schools don’t begin their seasons until Sept. 5 while Cathedral and Wilkinson County High School have an open date this Friday and won’t begin their seasons until Aug. 28.

However, for the rest of the schools in the Miss-Lou, Friday brings a close to the hot summer months of weight lifting, running stairs and facing off against teammates in scrimmages and the beginning to another exciting football season.

Some of the area teams have already gotten a taste of game action with jamborees and scrimmage games this past week.

Adams County Christian School played two scrimmage games on Thursday night, defeating Hillcrest Christian 6-0 before falling to East Rankin by the score of 7-6.

Four more area schools played in the Natchez High Jamboree Friday night, with Cathedral, Trinity Episcopal, Wilkinson County and Natchez High getting tuned up for the season.

Cathedral fell to Point Coupee Central 14-8 while Trinity defeated Wilkinson County 29-12 and Natchez beat Amite County 14-0.

The Trinity victory was particularly impressive, considering that the Saints are a Class A private schools defeating a Class 3A public school by two touchdowns.

Even though Wilkinson County was winless last season, it was still an impressive showing by Trinity considering that Wilkinson County has probably twice as many players as the Saints.

The jamborees and scrimmages are a great way for teams to see what they have and what they need to work on before the regular season while giving the fans a much-needed football fix after nine months without the sport.

Cathedral’s new triple option offense still needs a little bit of work after the Green Wave scored just one touchdown — in the final 10 seconds — against Point Coupee Central.

Cathedral coach Craig Beesley did say last week that he expected the offense to be rough in the jamboree and is happy he now has two weeks to fine-tune it before the Green Wave open their season Aug. 28 against Loyd Star.

Natchez High also had a good performance at the jamboree, albeit against a mediocre Class 3A team in Amite County.

Bulldog coach Lance Reed was especially impressed with the physicality of his defense, which played extremely well in pitching a shutout.

“We saw some guys play a little bit more physical than (we expected),” Reed said after the game. “We saw the physicality, and now we have to work on some execution a little better.”

Now that the jamborees and scrimmages are over, it’s time to buckle down the chin strap for a few more days and get one final good week of practice in.

The time for implementing game plans and perfecting the team is dwindling down.

Come Friday night, the lights go on for real and the area teams will see just how good they really are.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor for The Democrat. He can be reached at sports@natchezdemocrat.com.