Eighteen Days From the First Bell to the First Kickoff: Wilson County Football Opens August 21
Students across Wilson County walked back through the doors this morning. In eighteen days, a good share of the county will walk back through a different set of gates — the ones with a ticket booth, a concession trailer and the sound of a band warming up somewhere behind the visitor bleachers.
Tennessee's high school football season formally opens on Thursday, August 20, though the bulk of the state — Mt. Juliet included — waits for Friday night. Both of the city's public high schools kick off on Friday, August 21, at 7 p.m. Mt. Juliet High opens at home against Antioch. Green Hill starts on the road at Beech.
A rivalry that is only six years old and already lopsided
For most of Mt. Juliet's history there was one public high school and one set of Friday-night colors. That changed in the fall of 2020, when Green Hill opened its doors as the largest public project Wilson County had ever undertaken — a roughly $107 million campus built to absorb a city that had stopped being a bedroom community and started being a destination.
Six seasons later, the Hawks have not been a polite new neighbor. Green Hill went undefeated in 2024 at 12-0 and claimed the Region 4-6A title. The Hawks followed it with a 10-3 season in 2025, again finishing 5-0 in region play and first in the region, before a 21-17 loss to Oakland ended the run in the state playoffs. Along the way they have taken four of the five meetings with Mt. Juliet High.
That is the backdrop for the schedule the two schools just drew, and it is worth knowing before anyone buys a season pass: the games that decide this thing are all crammed into October.
The October gauntlet
Region 4-6A puts Mt. Juliet, Green Hill, Wilson Central, Lebanon, Gallatin and Cookeville in the same pot, which means the county's three big public programs cannot avoid each other. The region slate breaks like this:
- Sept. 11 — Lebanon at Mt. Juliet
- Sept. 18 — Green Hill at Gallatin
- Sept. 25 — Cookeville at Green Hill
- Oct. 2 — Gallatin at Mt. Juliet
- Oct. 16 — Wilson Central at Mt. Juliet; Green Hill at Lebanon
- Oct. 23 — Mt. Juliet at Cookeville; Wilson Central at Green Hill
- Oct. 30 — Mt. Juliet at Green Hill
Read that last line again. The season ends with the Golden Bears making the short drive across town, at 7 p.m. on the final Friday in October, to a stadium that did not exist when most of their seniors were in elementary school. Green Hill will have hosted Wilson Central the week before. Whatever seeding is still unsettled by then will be settled in those two nights, on the same field.
Before October, the tune-up games
The non-region schedule is where both programs will figure out what they actually have. Mt. Juliet draws Antioch at home to open, then travels to Beech on Aug. 28, hosts Friendship Christian on Sept. 4 at 7:30, and takes two long bus rides — Jefferson County on Sept. 18 and Northeast on Sept. 25.
Green Hill's non-region draw is the harder one on paper. After opening at Beech, the Hawks go to Page on Aug. 28, then host Ravenwood on Sept. 4 and Centennial on Sept. 11 in back-to-back Friday nights against Williamson County programs that do not travel quietly. They also have a rare Thursday game, hosting Glencliff on Oct. 1.
What it costs you, roughly
Nothing about a Wilson County Friday night is complicated. Gates typically open about an hour before kickoff, the good seats on the home side are gone by 6:30 for anything with the word “region” attached, and parking at both campuses fills from the outside in. If you have a student who just started ninth grade this morning, the August 21 opener is the cheapest, easiest introduction to the next four years of your calendar.
New to the county and still sorting out which school your address feeds? Our Mt. Juliet schools guide maps the zones. And if you are still working through this week's logistics, we covered the first day of school and the bus routes separately.
Eighteen days. The grass is already striped.
