WAKE UP! on ETBLITZ | Team, players of the year awards announced on June 1, June 8; Overton-Gary today (preview later on ETB)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cozy Coffee Station (Home | Cozy Coffee Station) in Kilgore and Gilmer present Wake Up! on ETBlitz, the Wednesday edition! Go see the good folks at Cozy Coffee Station at 755 Highway 271 North in Gilmer or 110 Midtown Plaza in Kilgore!

Overton-Burton

We’ve mentioned it every day this week, but it’s finally here: Overton faces Burton tonight at 6 p.m. at Sam Houston State in Huntsville in the first game of a best-of-three-game series.

It’s the state semifinals, and the winner goes to meet Collinsville or Stamford in the 2A-Division II state title game on June 5 at Round Rock’s Dell Diamond.

Tickets are $10 at the door for adults, $7 for students, and if you can’t make it to Huntsville,  hear it on KWRD 1470AM-98.5FM and streaming on Network1Sports.com here (Network1Sports). As we said yesterday, it’s audio-only, but it is free, with no subscription.

Speaking of subscriptions, we still haven’t seen a streaming link that plans to actually broadcast the game. If that changes between now and game time, we’ll post the update here on ETBlitz.com and on Facebook and Instagram.

We’ll have our preview of Overton-Burton here on ETBlitz.com mid-morning – we’ll send out a reminder on our socials when it’s up. And good luck, Mustangs; we hope to cover you next week at Dell Diamond!

In case you missed it…

Dave Campbell’s Texas Football has features throughout the offseason, and one they ran this week was their picks for the best quarterback-receiver combinations in the state. The first story was for 6A and 5A classifications (Monday), and then on Tuesday, for the 4A and 3A classifications.

DCTF picked Kilgore’s Kayson Brooks and receiver Lakeyleon Graves as not one of, but THE top combination in the state of Texas in 4A, a tremendous honor.

Our story is here (KILGORE’S BROOKS, GRAVES IN SPOTLIGHT | Dave Campbell’s names duo state’s top 4A QB/WR combo!), and we don’t mind giving DCTF a plug. Matt Stepp and the boys – and girls – work hard over there.

Special announcements in June

Since we launched this site in October, 2023, ETBlitz has changed the game in local sports coverage.

We’ve covered all the high school sports, of course, but we’ve also covered – and broadcasted – drill team halftime shows, Miss Gregg County the last two years, and the UIL State Spirit / Cheer Competition in Fort Worth.

East Texas realizes that you don’t have to actually HOLD a piece of newsprint to feel like you’ve got coverage of local high schools. And it’s not just football, by any means.

In December, 2024, ETBlitz set a record with over 900,000 hits to this site. In January and February combined, which included coverage of the state spirit competition, basketball and soccer, the site had over 1 million hits. And in May alone, we’re well over 500K, with a couple of days to go.

And it’s because of you guys, reading this site, hopefully expecting a higher quality of local sports, expecting it to be timely, and fair.

Our Whataburger / ETBlitz.com Players of the Week and our Goudarzi & Young Team of the Week awards are something the kids look forward to each week. Numbers for our social media accounts, particularly Facebook and Instagram, are climbing daily.

We have LOVED covering all of the programs in our coverage area, and we always name them in alphabetical order because it’s supposed to show unbiasedness. This time, we’ll name them in REVERSE alphabetical order, how ‘bout that: White Oak, West Rusk, Troup, Tatum, Sabine, Overton, Leverett’s Chapel, Kilgore, Henderson, Gladewater, Gilmer, and Arp, as well as Kilgore College.

We announced this a week ago, but it might have been overlooked, so we’re announcing it again today.

At end-of-the-year banquets, or when student athletes are looking for honors to list that are noticeable to college recruiters, they want something that matters, an award that means something, named by the people who actually covered and coached them.

On Sunday, June 1, then on Sunday, June 8, ETBlitz.com changes the game again.

We’re not going to wait until the end of the calendar year to name our players and team of the year. We’re doing it now, right after the school year ends.

So, on Sunday morning, June 1, we’ll unveil the very first Goudarzi & Young, LLP / ETBlitz.com Team of the Year for the 2024-2025 school year. On the following Sunday, June 8, we’ll name the Whataburger / ETBlitz.com Players of the Year (male and female) for the ’24-’25 school year.

And not only will we name the winners – we’re going to name the runners-up, every single nominee.

That’s it for Wake Up! on Wednesday. Come back in a while for our Overton-Burton preview, and we’ll have coverage of game one from Huntsville tonight.