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CARROLLWOOD - The Chamberlain High School Chiefs are poised to storm St. Petersburg's Tropicana Field on Saturday for a state first: indoor high school football.
The Chiefs will battle the Armwood High School Hawks at 4 p.m. Saturday in the second game of the daylong Battle of the Bay Kickoff Classic, a new venture modeled after the annual Texas Football Classic. The first game will be Dunedin and St. Petersburg at 1 p.m.; the Classic will end with Bradenton Manatee and Hillsborough at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $6.
Organizers are hoping for a crowd of 7,500. They hope attendance will be high because of the participation of elite teams like Chamberlain and Armwood, which became the first team from Hillsborough County to go 15-0 on their way to the Class 4A state championship last fall.
"You've got Armwood, which is a state champion, you have Chamberlain, which played for the state championship in 2001, and you've got Hillsborough County's all-time winningest coach in (Chamberlain's) Billy Turner," said Orlando marketing consultant Steve Berrey, one of the event organizers.
"Our kids are excited about it," said Armwood coach Sean Callahan. "They don't really know what to expect from it because I would say 90 percent of them have never been in a dome. They'll probably be wide-eyed when they walk in."
Tickets for the three games are available at all six participating high schools and Tropicana Field. For more information, call Hillsborough County district Athletic Director Vernon Korhn at 740-3971.