GULF SHORES, Ala. — Both of Alabama’s southernmost high school football programs opened the 2026 season with wins on Friday, Aug. 21 — and both did it weeks after cutting the ribbon on athletic facilities that would look expensive at a much larger school.
Gulf Shores 30, Parklane Academy 21
The Gulf Shores Dolphins opened at home against a genuinely difficult first opponent: Parklane Academy of McComb, Mississippi, back-to-back MAIS state champions. Gulf Shores won 30-21 in a game that stayed contested throughout, moving to 1-0.
The win came in the shadow of a campus that only opened this month. Gulf Shores High School held its official ribbon-cutting on Monday, Aug. 10, for a $157 million, 287,000-square-foot campus at Foley Beach Express and Coastal Gateway Boulevard. The athletic facilities inside it are among the most substantial in the state at any classification.
Orange Beach 24, T.R. Miller 14
The Orange Beach Makos went on the road to Brewton and beat T.R. Miller 24-14 in a non-region game, a useful result heading into Class 4A Region 1 play.
Orange Beach athletes have their own new building to work in. The city recently completed the opening of a $46.1 million athletic complex — an unusual asset for a Class 4A program, and one that reflects how much the municipality has invested in school athletics over the past several years.
Why the facilities matter
Facilities do not win games by themselves, and coaches at both schools would say so first. But in a corner of the state where both cities have been adding population quickly and competing for families, the athletic infrastructure functions as a long-term development pipeline: better training space, better sports medicine, more practice availability and fewer scheduling conflicts across sports.
Both programs are now working with the kind of resources that typically take a decade to translate into sustained on-field results. Starting 1-0 is a reasonable first data point.
Up next
Gulf Shores hosts St. Paul’s on Friday, Aug. 28. Orange Beach plays its home opener the same night against Monroe County.