Friday Night Returns: Mt. Juliet and Green Hill Open the 2026 Season on August 21
There is a sound that arrives in Mt. Juliet in the third week of August and stays until the leaves turn — a marching band warming up in fragments, a whistle, the specific metallic thud of a blocking sled being hit by teenagers who have been waiting all summer to hit something. It comes back on Friday, August 21.
Both of the city's high schools open their seasons that night, and for once the schedule makers were kind: the games do not overlap venues, so the town can split itself cleanly down the middle.
The openers
Mt. Juliet High School hosts Antioch at 7 p.m., which means the Bears get the home opener — the good one, the one with the parking lot full by six and the student section already hoarse before kickoff.
Green Hill travels to Beech, also at 7 p.m. The Hawks open on the road, then stay on it, visiting Page the following Friday before finally coming home.
Two schools, one city
It is worth appreciating how recent this arrangement is. For most of its history, Mt. Juliet was a one-high-school town, and Mt. Juliet High carried the whole city's Friday nights by itself. Green Hill changed that — a second school for a city that had simply outgrown the first, built to absorb the same growth that has been filling in the fields along Lebanon Road and Golden Bear Gateway for two decades.
What that produced, almost immediately, was something a lot of fast-growing suburbs never quite get: a genuine crosstown rivalry between two schools whose players know each other from middle school, youth league, and the same neighborhoods. Split loyalties at Thanksgiving are a small price for that.
The rest of the fall
Mt. Juliet: Aug. 21 vs. Antioch (7 p.m.) · Aug. 28 at Beech (7 p.m.) · Sept. 4 vs. Friendship Christian (7:30 p.m.) · Sept. 11 vs. Lebanon, a region game · Sept. 18 at Jefferson County (7 p.m.) · Sept. 25 at Northeast (7 p.m.)
Green Hill: Aug. 21 at Beech (7 p.m.) · Aug. 28 at Page (7 p.m.) · Sept. 4 vs. Ravenwood (7 p.m.) · Sept. 11 vs. Centennial (7 p.m.) · Sept. 18 at Gallatin, a conference game (7 p.m.) · Sept. 25 vs. Cookeville, a conference game (7 p.m.)
Note the September 11 date on the Mt. Juliet side — Lebanon, at home, in region play. Circle it now. And Green Hill draws Ravenwood and Centennial on back-to-back home Fridays in early September, which is a genuinely difficult two weeks and also the best two-week stretch of football the Hawks' home crowd will get all year.
Before you go
Gates open early, cash is not always king anymore, and the smart move is still to eat first — the concession line at a season opener is its own kind of endurance event. Mt. Juliet has gotten considerably better at feeding people on the way to a ballgame; browse local spots on our Food & Drink page and build in twenty extra minutes.
Bring a jacket anyway. Late August lies to you until about the fourth quarter.
