This year’s Aug. 23  football jamboree with Nixa, Ozark and Kickapoo was a little bit different. This year marks the first time Kickapoo will be playing both Ozark and Nixa during the regular season. The jamboree has been a thing since at least 2012, and every year

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een Nixa playing Ozark and Kickapoo, but the only teams that really played each other were Nixa and Ozark. Well this past summer, Kickapoo was recently moved to the same conference as Nixa. They moved up alo

ng with Lebanon, Waynesville, and Glendale, while teams like Neosho, Carl Junction, Branson, and Willard left the conference. Coach John Perry, the head coach of Nixa’s team, along with Kickapoo’s coach Nate Thomas and Ozark’s coach Jeremy Cordell, said their players are getting prepared for their later matchups in the regular season.

Thomas took over as head coach of the Kickapoo program the summer of 2017 after coaching at Marshfield. Within those years, Kickapoo has had a pretty successful few seasons with him, but the players wanted more regular season competition than their Ozark Conference teams. So in the summer of 2024, Kickapoo was one of four Ozark Conference teams who were brought up to the Central Ozark Conference (COC), allowing the Kickapoo Thomas said it was useful to play Nixa and Ozark during the jamboree. 

   “Anytime you can get to see a familiar opponent that you’re gonna get to see in the season and to be able to play against them during the jamboree, I think that’s huge for us to see the speed and physicality that were gonna have to bring to the table in this new conference without a doubt,” he said.  

   Cordell, who was appointed head coach of the Ozark Tigers in January of 2023, has brought high potential to the team. Although going 2-8 his first season, the team looks a lot more ready after this year’s Jamboree. 

   “Any work that you get in before week one is a bonus, and we are excited about what we did tonight, and the growth of our football team and how we played tonight,” Cordell said.

   If you go to Nixa you know John’s Perry’s name. You know the success he’s had leading Nixa’s football team since becoming head coach in 2020. With much success in the postseason, going as far as the district championship in the 2022-2023 season, he is no stranger to playing new competition, so the jamboree is always a good kickoff to that success.