Ask a Pleasant Grove parent what fall looks like and the answer starts at Hawk Stadium. What often gets missed is how the football calendar actually structures the rest of the weekend. Home weeks pull the neighborhood inward toward Richmond Road. Away weeks push it outward toward downtown Texarkana, where the fall event calendar happens to peak on exactly the Saturdays the Hawks are traveling. Once you see the pattern, planning the season gets a lot easier.
Here is the 2026 rhythm, mapped against what is actually open, playing, or pouring within a short drive.
The 2026 Hawks Home Slate
The Hawks are coming off a deep run, finishing the 2025 season 11-2 overall and 5-0 in district, with the season ending in the UIL 4A D2 Regional Semifinal against Carthage. The 2026 varsity schedule locks in five home Fridays worth planning around.
| Date | Opponent | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Fri, Aug 28 | Kilgore | Home |
| Fri, Sep 4 | Sulphur Springs | Away |
| Fri, Sep 11 | Liberty-Eylau | Home |
| Fri, Sep 18 | Paris | Home |
| Fri, Sep 25 | C.E. Byrd (Shreveport) | Away |
| Fri, Oct 9 | Gilmer | Away |
| Fri, Oct 16 | Center | Home |
The Aug 28 opener against Kilgore kicks at 7:30 pm, with Sept 4 at Sulphur Springs and Sept 11 vs Liberty-Eylau both at 7:00. The athletics office sits at 5406 McKnight in Texarkana, so the stadium sits inside the neighborhood most readers of this post already drive through every day.
Pre-Game Along Richmond Road
Kickoff at 7:00 or 7:30 leaves a real dinner window, and the cluster of restaurants between Morris Lane and Richmond Road is where most Hawks families end up before walking into the stadium. A few worth rotating through:
- Ironwood Grill at 4312 Morris Ln, currently ranked #1 of 126 Texarkana restaurants on Tripadvisor. Reliable for a sit-down before a home game, and close enough to the stadium that a 5:45 reservation still gets you to your seat.
- Loca Luna Mexican Grill at 4400 Moores Lane, a short block off Richmond and quick enough for a Friday turnaround.
- Ritz D'Bento Japanese Steakhouse on Richmond, an option when the kids want hibachi instead of burgers.
- Naaman's BBQ, one of the Richmond corridor's steadier BBQ stops when tailgating at home isn't in the cards.
If you would rather skip the sit-down entirely and grab something on the way, Taste and See at 2838 Richmond Rd Ste B handles a quick sandwich, and Eden Bubble Tea at 3003 Richmond Rd Suite A2 is a favorite student stop before games for a reason.
The trick to a home Friday isn't finding somewhere to eat. It's picking a place close enough that you don't spend the drive watching the clock.
Saturday Morning, No Matter the Result
Win or lose, Saturday mornings in Pleasant Grove tend to look the same. Coffee first.
The Doughnut Cafe at 3130 Richmond Rd is the low-key answer, described in local reviews as a good local coffee stop rather than a chain default. If breakfast is the real event and the family wants to make a morning of it, the newer entrant is First Watch, which opened at 4002 St. Michael Drive on Monday, March 23, 2026, serving breakfast, brunch, and lunch from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. That St. Michael Drive location puts it a short hop from Pleasant Grove without fighting the I-30 corridor.
For a longer Saturday, the 2026 Texarkana Farmers Market runs Saturday mornings from 8:00 am at 500 N Stateline Ave. It is the natural bridge from a Pleasant Grove morning to whatever downtown has going on that afternoon.
Away Weekends Belong to Downtown
Here is the piece most residents miss. Three of the Hawks' 2026 away games fall on Saturdays that downtown has already claimed for something. If your Friday night ended in Shreveport, Sulphur Springs, or Gilmer, the smart move is not to sit at home the next day.
The fall calendar downtown, in order:
- Oktoberfest on Main on Saturday, October 3, from 5:00 PM at Historic Downtown Texarkana. Main Street Texarkana's annual anchor event, which has brought life downtown in the fall for years running.
- Pickle Fest Texarkana 2026 on Saturday, October 10, from 10:00 AM at Front Street Texarkana. This one lines up almost perfectly with the Oct 9 Hawks trip to Gilmer, meaning the family that skipped the road game gets a full Saturday downtown.
- Destination Downtown: 9th Annual Event with Headliner Mark Chesnutt on Saturday, October 24, from 4:00 PM in Downtown Texarkana.
- Gary Allan at Front Street Festival Plaza on Saturday, November 14, from 6:00 PM, a bookend to the season for country fans.
A stop worth building into any of these Saturdays: Redbone Magic Brewing at 1304 Texas Blvd, which routinely programs its own live music and paint-and-sip nights around the downtown event calendar. If you left the stadium hungry Friday and want a slower Saturday evening, this is where a lot of Pleasant Grove regulars end up.
For readers who want the deeper downtown menu without wading through a calendar app, Main Street Texarkana's own schedule of community events like the Spring Artisan Market, Music in the Park, and the Annual Christmas Parade covers the year in one place.
The Quiet Sunday That Makes Monday Work
Fall Sundays in Pleasant Grove are almost universally shorter than the Saturdays that preceded them. The pattern most families settle into: church, a slow lunch, and either the yard or Bringle Lake before dark. The neighborhood's proximity to Bringle Lake Trail is one of the things that makes back-to-back football weekends sustainable rather than exhausting. A 45-minute walk on Sunday afternoon resets the week in a way that a couch cannot.
For visiting family who traveled in for a home game and stayed over, downtown's historic core is the Sunday sightseeing move. The upcoming Downtown LIVE! quarterly events routinely include guided tours of historic landmarks, including The Texarkanan, formerly the Texarkana National Bank, and a visit to the newly opened Kilwins, now located in the former Alexander's Jewelers space on Broad Street. Even outside the LIVE! nights, walking Broad Street on a Sunday afternoon gives out-of-town relatives a version of Texarkana most residents forget to show off.
Reading the Schedule Like a Local
Two things separate a resident's approach to fall from a newcomer's.
First, the district games matter more than the marquee non-district ones. Kilgore is a great opener, but the district slate that starts later in September is the stretch that determines how deep November runs. Last year's 5-0 district finish is what put the Hawks in position for the November playoff games at home.
Second, the home-week and away-week distinction is what makes the fall calendar tractable. If you try to attend every downtown event and every Hawks game, you will burn out by mid-October. The families who do this well pick their home Fridays, cede the away Fridays to a quieter dinner, and treat the away Saturdays as the free window to catch Oktoberfest on Main or Pickle Fest without a schedule conflict.
That is the whole trick. The stadium sets the tempo. Everything else in Pleasant Grove and downtown Texarkana fits around it.
If you are already living the Pleasant Grove fall calendar and starting to think about what your home is worth in this market, Teresa Liepman can walk you through where Pleasant Grove pricing sits right now and what a sale timeline into the spring market would actually look like. Request Your Free Home Valuation to get started.
