Arkadelphia Badger football fans will have a chance to catch a glimpse of the 2015 version of the Badgers this Friday night at the spring football scrimmage at 6:00 on AllCare Field at Badger Stadium.

The Badgers will begin head coach J.R. Eldridge’s fifth season this August, but will wrap up a two-week spring practice session this Friday night, June 5, with an intra-squad scrimmage.

Arkadelphia Athletic Director Chris Babb is asking fans to help in a variety of ways to serve as admission to the game. Instead of the standard ticket fee, fans are asked to provide one of the following to serve as admission to the spring scrimmage: a package of powdered sports drink, a jar or two of peanut butter, a blue or white bath towel or a minimum donation of $2 to help purchase laundry detergent for the 2015-16 school year.

“There are lots of costs throughout the year and this is one way Badger fans can help us with offsetting those costs that we often may not think about,” said Babb. “We go through more laundry detergent in all of our sports than anybody might imagine throughout the course of a year at Goza and the high school, and we obviously use a lot of Powerade/Gatorade as well. These are a few of the items that are yearly purchases that come with operating the athletic department.”

The Badgers welcome the 2014-15 members of the Junior Badger Club to the scrimmage as well. Members of the Jr. Badger Club are invited to gather in front of the amphitheater around 5:45 to be able to run onto the field with the Badgers.

With the offense and defense playing against each other, fans will be kept abreast of the situations of the scrimmage over the PA system and fans can also bring their radios to the game and hear the voice of the Badgers Dr. Jeff Root on the radio broadcast of the game as well as various interviews throughout the night on ESPN WPS 106.9 FM.

The Badgers will treat Friday just like a game day Friday with their pre-game schedule and will take AllCare Field at Badger Stadium at 5:55 via the Badger winning walk, winding through the ramp that leads to from the home side of the stands to the field.

“We’ve had a good spring practice session and look forward to wrapping things up as school end next week,” said Eldridge. “Our kids have really put in some good work and this has been a good chance for some of our returners to get back on the field and a good time for our new players to learn our schemes before summer camps.”

The extended school year due to multiple snow days from the winter actually benefitted the Badger football team. With APSD scho

ol being extended until June 10, Eldridge was able to push spring practice back to begin the day after Memorial Day. The benefit came in that the Badgers had all of the football players who are also on the Badger baseball team able to practice for the entire two-week period.

“When the school year was extended due to snow, we went ahead and pushed out practice dates back in anticipation of our baseball team making the state championship game,” said Eldridge. We’re proud of Coach Matros and the baseball team and are glad that their season went so long. There are a lot of our guys on that team and we love for them to be in the habit of winning.”

Gates will open Friday night at 5:00. If fans wish to make a donation larger than the donation of $2, checks can be made out to APSD Athletics.