Great Bend High School gave a sneak preview of the fall sports teams on Friday night.
The Great Bend volleyball, football and soccer programs descended on the Panther Fieldhouse and Memorial Stadium for scrimmages. All of the fall sports teams were introduced the fans prior to the scrimmages.
The volleyball team scrimmaged at Panther Fieldhouse, and the football and soccer teams followed suit at Memorial Stadium in a busy night that was capped by an all-school dance in the commons area.
Great Bend’s football program featured scrimmages from its varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams.
“I think things went pretty good,” Great Bend head football coach Bo Black said. “It was really just a dress rehearsal for our first football game.
“We got to go through our pre-game warmup for the first time and tried the best we could to create a Friday night game environment.”
The Panthers open their season on Friday night, traveling to Overland Park to play St. Thomas Aquinas in a 7 p.m. kickoff.
Great Bend is coming off a 4-5 season, advancing to the Class 5A state bi-district playoff game, where it lost in the first round to eventual state runner-up Bishop Carroll.
“We just tried to brush up on some small things,” Black said of the controlled scrimmage. “It was a pretty basic scrimmage with basic plays that we ran.
“We wanted to get the kids in a condition where they can move forward and go into game week on Monday.”
Great Bend’s starting quarterback is senior Mitch Kottas, and junior Matt Marshall is his backup.
“I still think Matt is going to be a good quarterback for us,” Black said. “We’ll see how that progresses throughout the year.
“Mitch is our starter. Going into the game, there’s still a couple of  positions that we want to look at. That’s what we want is people thinking that they can be playing and push starters.”

• New-look Lady Panthers
GBHS head coach Kelsey Perry ushered in the 2011 volleyball team — the new-look Lady Panthers with only three returning letter winners from last season.
“It’s pretty much all new,” she said of her varsity roster. “We just have three seniors  — Rachel Harris (outside hitter), Katelyn Henning (libero) and Elizabeth Kutina (middle hitter) that have any experience.
“We had a lot of great comments (from fans and parents) after the scrimmage. People are excited how good they look entering the season. Brenna Haynes (sophomore middle blocker) played excellent and Tarynn Stuedder (sophomore setter) played great.”
Getting some live scrimmaging in a competitive setting was paramount, according to Perry.
“Having actual game-like situations is the best scenario before we actually play a match,” Perry said. “It was good to see that on Friday.
“The freshmen played each other in a scrimmage, and then we had a varsity-JV scrimmage. We lost all of our servers from last year, with the exception of Katelyn Henning. No one else has ever served in a varsity match before, so we’ve kind of had to revamp everything and we’re excited about that aspect of our game.”