The 2025 TSSAA high school football season will begin Thursday. Week 1 games will be contested through Saturday in Tennessee.
During the final day of opening week, two former Tennessee football assistant coaches will be on opposing sidelines.
Advertisement
Heritage High School (Maryville, Tennessee) will play at Clinton High School (Clinton, Tennessee) on Saturday. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. EDT at Dragon Stadium.
The Heritage-Clinton game was scheduled for Friday and moved to Saturday. The contest will feature Heritage head coach Joe Osovet and Clinton head coach Jake Dawson.
Osovet served as an assistant coach at Tennessee from 2018-20 under head coach Jeremy Pruitt. He was tight ends coach in 2020, director of football programming in 2019 and director of player development in 2018.
Dawson was a defensive undergraduate assistant under Pruitt in 2020. Following his tenure with the Vols, he was an assistant coach at Powell High School (Powell, Tennessee) in 2021. Dawson was co-defensive coordinator and secondary coach under Osovet at Heritage from 2022-23 before serving as defensive coordinator at Catholic High School in Knoxville, Tennessee last season.
Advertisement
“Jake will do a great job at Clinton,” Osovet told Vols Wire. “Clinton knocked it out of the park when they hired Jake.”
Joe Osovet
In addition to working for Pruitt and Osovet, Dawson also coached for Matt Lowe at Powell when the Panthers won a 5A state championship.
“Osovet is a good one,” Dawson told Vols Wire. “I don’t deserve this opportunity at this time in my life, but God is good. I wouldn’t be where I am without these guys. They helped make me the person and the coach that I am.”
Dawson was hired as a first-time head coach with Clinton at 24 years old.
More: Joe Osovet discusses playoffs in fourth year as Heritage’s head coach
Advertisement
More: Former Vols’ assistant Jake Dawson named head coach at Clinton
Follow Vols Wire on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
This article originally appeared on Vols Wire: Season opener between former Vol football assistants moved to Saturday
