This week marks our 28^th and 29^th episodes of “The Prep Zone Sports Show” for the 2025-26 school year.

Since the first show of the year on Aug. 20, we’ve had hundreds of athletes and coaches onsite at locally owned Sonic Drive-In of Gainesville (NW 39^th Avenue and SW Archer Road). We streamed ‘live’ and ‘archived’ audio of the shows on Mainstreet Daily News and The Prep Zone.

Our fall shows included football, volleyball, cross country, golf, and swimming and diving teams in the area. We had special features, like the high school football playoffs and a National Signing Day show.

In the winter, we had local girls and boys soccer teams on the program, along with girls weightlifting and girls and boys basketball. 

As we moved into March, our guests included wrestling, softball and baseball, and we expanded to girls flag football and tennis.

We did our best to feature as many schools as possible and hosted teams from Buchholz, Eastside, Gainesville, Hawthorne, Newberry, P.K. Yonge, Saint Francis Catholic Academy, The Rock School, Trenton, Union County (Lake Butler) and Williston.

Last week, our guests were the FHSAA Baseball Rural state champion Union County and head coach Jiwan James. The Tigers won their first state title since 2012 with a wild 10-9 victory against Trenton in the state championship game.

They still had their bleached blonde hair, with mixed feelings on returning to their natural color or keeping the blonde look. I asked what the over/under on that was. Here is the link to last week’s show.

We missed a few Wednesdays in the month of May, but that’s because we were either broadcasting or covering the state playoffs.

I was in Jacksonville on Wednesday, May 6, to cover the FHSAA Class 1A Track & Field championships, in Fort Myers the following Wednesday, covering Trenton and Union County baseball in the Rural state semifinals, and in Longwood on Wednesday, May 20, covering Trenton softball against Liberty County (Bristol) in the Rural state championship game.

Since we missed a few shows, we decided to extend our coverage into June. For the first time, at least this year, we have two shows in one week.

Perhaps the best part about last week and this week is that we are ending our shows for the year with back-to-back-to-back state champions, and they are all Tigers.

Marty Pallman joined me in Fort Myers for the baseball final four and co-hosted last week’s show.

The following week in Longwood, I broadcast Columbia (Lake City) softball’s state semifinal win on the NFHS Network and Marty broadcast their state championship game online.

It’s tough to be unbiased when you are calling games like that. Our job as a play-by-play announcer is to make it as exciting as possible for both audiences.

But for me, I was happy that I got to call a walk-off in the state semifinals and I’m sure there is a part of Marty who was excited to call a state championship for Columbia.

This Thursday from 6-7 p.m., Marty and I will be joined by Columbia head coach Joe Saucier and the Class 4A state champion Tigers at locally owned Sonic Drive-In on 39th Avenue in Gainesville.

We’ll definitely talk about the program’s first softball state title in 13 years, and their 16-game winning streak to end the season, and we’ll get to know Saucier and the girls a little bit more and what it was like to bring home the gold.

But first, the Trenton softball team, which won its third straight state title, will be our guests tonight from 6-7 p.m. at locally owned Sonic Drive-In (Archer Road). Trenton head coach Kevin Benson and University of Florida commit Addison Allaire are among the many guests on the show

You can listen to both shows ‘live’ online here.