Claremore Zebras Aim For Another Winning Season, Bringing Hope After Tornado

We continue our high school football previews with the Claremore Zebras from Class 5A.

The team reached double-digit wins last year for the first time since 2012 and the Zebras are motivated to repeat that success after the town was hit by a tornado in May.

The town of Claremore has been through a lot this summer, still picking up the pieces from the May 26 tornado. With just a couple of weeks until the start of the football season, the Zebras hope to bring the community some healing under the Friday night lights.

“I think our community needs a feel-good moment,” said head coach Jarrett Hurt. “We've been through the tornado, and that's an ongoing process. People are still cleaning up; there's still debris everywhere. I think our community needs something really good to feel good about, and football season's here, so why not that? Why not get excited about football season and have that be our feel-good moment to bring our community back together again? We want to get the community involved. We appreciate our community, and we try to help out our community. But I think what our community needs most now is some W's on Friday night.”

Senior linebacker Tyson Grimett added, “I think the community is going to show out. They've always backed us year in and year out, especially coming off the season last year.”

The Zebras kick off their season at Lantow Field on Sept. 6 against Bartlesville.