Irish set to face Baylor in marquee matchup
It was Mark Packer, the broadcaster and media personality behind the Rivalry Thursday and Rivalry Friday matchups that air on East Tennessee televisions each fall.
Packer’s pitch to the Knoxville Catholic athletic director started a snowball effect, which will land this Friday, Oct. 30, as Knoxville Catholic faces the Baylor School at Covenant Health Park in the inaugural Covenant Health Classic.
To prepare for the event, the baseball field at the home of the Knoxville Smokies has been converted to a football gridiron.
A video from the Rivalry Thursday Instagram page showed bulldozers rolling onto the field as workers laid mats, dug up dirt and nailed down tarp to prepare for the sod needed to create the playing surface.
This will not be Catholic’s first baseball venue this year, as the Irish defeated a Hoover (AL) at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex — home of the SEC Baseball Tournament — earlier this season.
Nor will it be the Catholic athletic department’s first foray into unique matchups, as the Irish have hosted outdoor volleyball matchups at Blaine Stadium along with a preseason volleyball tilt between Tennessee and Vanderbilt in April.
It will, however, be the biggest matchup of the season for KCHS, as the Irish take on a Baylor team featuring 5-star tailback David Gabriel-Georges, who is committed to Tennessee.
Another visiting draw comes in the form of Marshall Manning, a Baylor backup QB who is the son of former UT quarterback Peyton Manning.
“I’m super excited about this,” said Surlas, whose own team features QB Mack Bartholomew and weapons such as Kruise Buntyn and David Thomas. We always love to be the first to do anything, so we’re honored and grateful to Covenant Health Park. And Chris Allen, CEO of Boyd Sports, has been fantastic. It’s a home game for us and we had this opportunity come up, and we wanted to talk to our senior parents and get their take. After doing that, Mr. Sompayrac and Coach Shadowens and I decided to do it. We’re giving up a home game to do it but it’s too exciting to turn down.”
Surlas noted that Packer inquired about televising the Catholic-Baylor game when it was slated to take place at KCHS
But the Irish already had agreed to be televised for their Thursday night tilt with Anderson County, so Surlas said he was hesitant about the
Baylor game since he
wanted the crowd there to see it in person.
“I’m not sure when Baylor’s running back had committed to Tennessee and it became a huge story,” he said. “That might’ve coincided with the timing,
but Mark Packer reached out to us weeks before the season to inquire about allowing him to broadcast his game with Baylor.
“We were already slated for Anderson County and wanted to maximize our home stands and make a little money at the gate and figured it would be a big game, so we were hesitant on that,” Surlas added. “We politely declined, but a few weeks later, he reached out and said he’d had contact with Chris Allen. So we met with Chris and Mark together and hammered out the details.”
The final product will take place this weekend, as Knoxville’s home for baseball becomes a football spectacle.
“From kids to students to alumni to faculty, everybody is really excited about this opportunity,” Surlas said. “To be a trendsetter and be the first Knoxville school to play there, it’s amazing.
“Baylor’s pretty good on the other side, but once the tickets became available, they were gone in a day or two,” he continued. “It sold out immediately. I think Covenant would agree that nobody thought it would be that big of a deal, but we’re excited to play in front of people we normally wouldn’t play in front of. We know why Mark and Covenant wanted to do this, but we hope we have a sea of green in the stands to support our kids.”
