By Bill Nestor
Are you ready for some football? Several high school football teams have been for a few weeks now and the waiting game has been a difficult one to play, but it’s been the only one that has been available. Injunctions put a lengthy delay on the second season and prompted a great deal of finger pointing. There has been enough blame to go around and it seems as if everyone has at least one, if not more, villains that they are blaming for the debacle.
While it would have been easy to come out and play the blame game through this process, I’ve been rather impressed with the attitudes of a couple of area head coaches that ha ve been right in the middle of this storm. Lincoln’s Rob Hawkins and Robert C. Byrd’s Austin Scott have just kept their focus on the task at hand preparing players for future opportunities.
At the time this article was written, the future of these teams was yet to be determined. Both Hawkins and Scott were playing the wait-and-see game. It was a slightly different version for each one, however. Hawkins was waiting to see if his squad would play while Scott’s road trip would be either seven or 277 miles away.
Both coaches have relatively young teams, which brings a series of concerns to the table. Keeping players focused through a distraction of this magnitude would be extremely difficult. Getting them to work hard when there is a chance that there might not even be a game as a reward is an obstacle that Hawkins has had to overcome.
They say that attitude reflects leadership and in both of these cases, it just so happens that both mentors possess positive attitudes that prompt players to put out maximum effort. That is part of the reason the Cougars and Flying Eagles were in position to push into the postseason despite murderous schedules.
The blame game is one we all play from time to time, but in this situation, let’s take a moment and focus on our next holiday. Let’s be thankful that we have leaders like Rob Hawkins and Austin Scott showing our youth how to tackle adversity with the proper attitude.
Darian DeVries received a rather rude welcome to the Backyard Brawl this past Friday. The new West Virginia Head Coach took his squad into hostile territory for hsi first edition of the Brawl. With 7:11 left in the opening half remaining and the Panthers prowling, DeVries found his team trailing by 21 points. It was an uphill battle from there and even though the Mountaineers didn’t quit, they couldn’t rally in the lopsided loss.
Pitt was undefeated moving into the matchup with WVU, but all three victories came inside the friendly confines of the Peterson Events Center. The wins did not come against top shelf opponents either (no offense to Radford, Murray State, or Gardner-Webb) which brings into question, exactly how good are the Panthers.
The 19 point defeat brings Mountaineer Nation back to earth and takes a little pressure off of this year’s squad. They have all of the makings of being a quality team and in time they could come together and be competitive in the Big 12 Conference.
That will do it for now. Until next week . . . take care and God Bless!!!