MOUNT BERRY, Ga. - The 11th season of football at Berry College will kickoff Saturday evening at Williams Field at Valhalla Stadium as the Vikings square off with a tough regional opponent in Huntingdon. Start time is set for 6 p.m., with tickets available at the Krannert Student Center, online at berrygameday.com, or at the box office at Valhalla two hours prior to the game.

"Preseason went really well for us," said Berry head coach Tony Kunczewski. "We've got a ton of experience coming back with eight starters on offense and eight on defense returning. The chemistry on this team has been breat and the vibe has started to get back towards what it was prior to the pandemic."

Yet Coach Kunczewski is well aware that chemistry only gets a team so far. "You still have to have the talent to go with it," he said. "We've got Blake Hembree coming back as our starting quarterback after six starts last season. We've got both of our running backs in Brandon Cade and Josh Rogers coming back. We had three offensive linemen that started as freshmen and sophomores that are now upperclassmen, and we have the SAA Lineman of the Year back in Tonny Garcia."

The group on offense with the least returning experience is at wide receiver; however, the talent is obviously there to be seen according to Coach Kunczewski. "We've got Bryce Herring back after winning SAA Newcomer of the Year last season," he said. "We've also got Deiondre Wilson and Khamari Smith out there who can catch passes. Walker Williams can make a lot of plays at the tight end spot. On top of that, we've got a lot of depth at a lot of places, which can only help us."

Defensively, the heart and soul of the Berry defense returns in linebacker Brock Skinner, who is using his fifth year of eligibility to compete for the Vikings. "He's one of the best leaders we could ask for," Coach Kunczewski said. "He played in five games last year, and three of the five he played on one foot. He's just a special player."

The Vikings also have depth with upperclassmen in the secondary. Seniors Nick Willis and Kristofer Thomas will anchor the corner spots, with juniors Mekhi Tchassama and Jarae Foster both backing up as juniors. Senior John Mancuso will play one of the safety positions, with junior Jake Whitten earning the start at the other spot.

Senior Kuuanas Walker will help to anchor the interior of the Berry defensive line while being flanked by juniors Jaden Melville and Luke Carlton.

"I think we'll be successful if we don't beat ourselves," Coach Kunczewski said. "We did a good job of taking care of the ball, but we didn't do a good job of creating turnovers on defense. That's been one of the things we've really worked on in the preseason. We played good defense last year, but to be great, we need to get more takeaways."

Berry's biggest question marks early in the season could come on special teams. After losing double All-SAA performer Mathew Syverson, the Vikings will turn to senior Charlie Bell on kicks and sophomore Trey Richards on punts. "Losing someone like Matthew hurts because he did so much for us, but we think we will be good to go with Charlie and Trey," Coach Kunczewski said.

It won't take long for Berry to find out how good its season will be. Huntingdon will provide a stern test as a team that is nearly a mirror image in the won-loss column as Berry over the past eight seasons. The Hawks are 60-21 (.741) with seven USA South championships over the past eight years. Berry is 63-16 (.797) with five SAA championships over the past eight seasons. The two sides have only met twice on the gridiron, with both contests coming in the NCAA playoffs. Each team has won one contest against the other.

The Vikings will have their yearly match-up with LaGrange next weekend in LaGrange, Ga., before an open week. SAA play begins Sept. 23 in Danville, Ky., against Centre. In last season's match-up, the Vikings won 31-30 in overtime after a blocked extra point attempt. A week later, perennial power Trinity visits Valhalla Stadium. With four tough games to start the season, Berry and Coach Kunczewski will know how the team is shaping up before the calendar flips to October.

"The conference has gotten a lot better," Coach Kunczewski said. "Trinity is a team that ranks in the top-five nationally. Centre has been really good. Hendrix has had solid seasons. But our standard has been set by winning five SAA championships in 10 years. The goal is to win the SAA, but we've never finished nationally in the Top 10 and that's something we'd like to accomplish."

Still, Coach Kunczewski knows that all those goals come with winning one game at a time. "There's a lot of talented teams that we play early on," he said. "There's no guarantees but we will find out by the end of September how good we really are."