Plenty of people will have a chance to see some St. John Paul II football this season, and head coach Kevin Creehan is embracing that opportunity.

This season will see the Falcons play their home games at Wicks Family Field at Joe Davis Stadium in Huntsville, the home of Huntsville City FC.

The Falcons will share the venue with Grissom, which will also play there under first-year coach Preston Judah.

Playing games at the stadium — which has a capacity of 6,000 fans — demonstrates to athletes that there is “a commitment in place” for excellence, Kreehan told AL.com.

“That’s the most important thing that we’ve done so far, is over the course of the last years, we started to show people that this isn’t something we just also do,” he said. “This is now a commitment. This is important to us. We want to be good at it, and we’re going to do all the things that are necessary in order to be good at it.

“For this year, man, it’s exciting. It’s a professional stadium, you’re not going to be able to find a nicer stadium in Alabama; it should be exciting, it should be an event. We want the whole school there. We want it to be an event when we play home games, not just another game.”

Along with St. John Paul II and Grissom, select home games for Huntsville, Mae Jemison and Columbia will also be played at the stadium.

But, different from other programs, St. John Paul II’s schedule features five games on Thursday nights; the lone home game on a Friday for the Falcons is a matchup against Madison Academy on Oct. 17.

“It’s really exciting,” quarterback Joey Ross said of playing on Thursdays. “The more exposure you can get from it, because it’s the only game that night, and it’s football, it’s still going to be fun no matter what.”

The opportunity for St. John Paul II to get half of its schedule on Thursday nights provides not just enhanced recruitment visibility for players, but will also let people in the community have the chance to see the program since it will be the only game in town.

“When coaches come in from out of town, and there’s 30 games they can see on Friday night, but only one on Thursday night, they’re going to come in, they’re going to watch the Thursday night game, and then they’re going to pick one of those games on Friday,” Kreehan said. “That means that our guys are going to get a little bit more exposure than they would have otherwise.

“In some ways, this is an opportunity for us to be an introduction or, at worst, a rebrand, but maybe even an introduction, to people that are unfamiliar with our school, what our mission is and what our potential is.”

As for the team, which has had a busy summer with a weight program and 7-on-7 action, players feel encouraged with where the program is heading into the second season under Creehan.

“Watching us play in the summer, it’s the most prepared I’ve ever seen us,” Mark Andrzejewski said. “Everyone around is getting better on the team.”

While Kreehan’s two-season tenure has been short, it marks the first time since 2019 that the Falcons have been coached by someone who’s been with the program longer than a year; the last multi-season coach was David Lloyd, who led St. John Paul II to a 9-3 record and first-round playoff win in 2019 before taking over at Randolph.

“Having someone you can rely on that’s not going to leave is really helpful,” Ross said. “You know he’s going to be there, he’s going to show up every day and then you just follow that path. Everyone starts thriving and being there on time; he’s a good culture starter.”

The consistency has not only helped the current and future players within the program, but has also taken steps in establishing a culture at the school that Creehan and his staff have brought since the first day.

St. John Paul II will open its season on Thursday, Aug. 21, against Elkmont at Joe Davis Stadium after a jamboree matchup at Etowah on Friday, Aug. 15.

“When you look at the culture that we’ve tried to instill, this group here is the first one to be able to take it for a full calendar year,” Kreehan said. “That means that we have a weight program, all offseason and it never, never really stops; all the way through, we have the summer program, we have players throw and catch, those kinds of things that happen on their own.

“All those things, you can see the fruits of those starting to come through. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t want to be providing too many predictions. We could be a lot better than we were last year, and still don’t have a great record. We have to be a lot better than we were a year ago and also be able to figure out how to put it together enough to win.”