September 25, 2008 10:57 pm
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By Mike Kays
Phoenix Sports Editor
Non-district schedules are over. Teams have had up to three weeks to tinker, tweak and test.
Some, like Checotah, Sequoyah and Porter, all 3-0, are getting rave reviews. Especially Checotah, which ended nine years of frustration at the hands of cross-county rival Eufaula and then ripped 2A No. 6 Henryetta 40-7. Checotah, under second-year coach Brandon Turley, has equaled last year’s 3-7 record in three tries.
You won’t be seeing much tweaking in Turley’s case.
“We want to try and build on what we’ve done,” he said. “But at the same time we have to realize that we’re no longer flying under the radar. We’re now ranked by just about everyone (No. 9 in Class 3A) and it’s something these kids have never faced. We’ve got to maintain our focus.”
For others, there’s refreshing symbolism in the start of district games. Whatever happened before now stays before now. Progress reports don’t count for grades and zero and 3 doesn’t keep you from winning a district title if you win your next seven.
No one need a cleaner slate than Hilldale. Having lost startling fullback/linebacker Ty Smallwood in Week 2, it got worse for the Hornets last week when they lost four more players — three with concussions and one due to a knee injury.
The 0-3 start is history, including last week’s 43-0 loss to Tuttle, but they’ll move forward minus starting quarterback Taylor Chalk, cornerback Trey McMahan, punter Stormy Dotson and Smallwood’s last-minute replacement at linebacker, Dustin Meilutas.
“One year when I was at Hugo, we were 0-3 and made the playoffs, so anything’s possible,” head coach Don Hendrix said. “We’ve got a lot to overcome but we’re going to give it a shot. We need to get players healthy and eliminate mistakes.”
Mistakes may be the hardest part — Hilldale entered this season with only seven seniors, two being Smallwood and Chalk. Younger players need broader learning curves and in this case, the optimist might say they’ll be mentally tougher for having gone through this run.
“That may be true if they don’t get so beat up they quit,” Hendrix said with a laugh, proof that a coach going through these times needs a sense of humor and perspective as well.
As far as progress reports might go, Muskogee battled through the equivalent of excessive homework and tough teachers. If the theory that better teachers make you smarter is true, then the Roughers, at 1-2 and losers of back-to-back games for the first time since 2005, are on schedule for some good fortune as 6A-3 battles begin.
"Our problems are fixable," Hennesy said following last week’s 24-7 loss to Union. "We knew the first three weeks would be a killer but we needed to grow through it. I think the effort has been there and it really does boil down to little things.
"I think we were a better team than the score showed tonight and I think the next seven weeks will prove that to be true. We've just got to keep getting better."
Wagoner could use Gus Jones. Its star running back/linebacker who has committed to play at Oklahoma next year missed most of the a 43-6 loss to Grove, then sat again as the Bulldogs lost 28-20 to East Central. The 1-2 start is the worst for the Bulldogs in Dale Condict’s four seasons at the school.
“I’ve dealt with it before, just not here,” Condict said. “But these kids are facing it with an attitude that’s as good as it’s been during the entire time I’ve been here.”
Not only did they lose Jones, four other starters, two that go both ways, went out in the Grove nightmare.
It’s an attitude that may have helped them bounce back to almost beat 5A No. 4 Tulsa East Central after a nightmare contest against former district rival Grove. Not only did the Bulldogs absorb a 43-6 loss to their former district rival, they lost of five starters, three of which went both ways, and battled the 5A power to the end. One of those was Oklahoma commit Gus Jones (back spasms) who is listed as “possible” for the district opener.
“The good thing is we had a week to adjust to the personnel issues and the kids did a great job of responding,” Condict said. “We starting losing people against Grove in the first quarter and it snowballed. In that situation the game plan is out the window, all the way down to special teams preparation and there’s not much you can do to adjust like if it had happened to you on a Monday.”
Fort Gibson? Last week, the Tigers wiped a board clean when it erased a 14-game losing streak, a skid dating back to a Week 8, 2006 victory against Stiwell. Tahlequah got its long-awaited wish of dropping out of Class 6A, but has yet to record a victory in its first non-district run in 5A. Maybe its a numbers recognition thing because the Tigers have yet to play a 5A team, losing to 6A Claremore and 4As Catoosa and Sallisaw. The encouraging thing: there’s three other 0-3 outfits in 5A-4 (Stilwell, McAlester and Tulsa Edison) and the Tigers will get a test against one of those in Stilwell this week.
Keys, which lost a starting running back earlier is 0-3 in 2A. The Cougars lost a running back, Kyler Welch, in the preseason and have struggled since.
In Class A, B and C, the grace period was considerably shorter as districts in these groupings have been doing battle now, in some cases, since Week 2. Except, that is, Midway. The Chargers got the non-district draw in Week 2 while the rest of C-4 went to war with each other and didn’t opend district until Friday when they blew past Bakokshe, 36-14.
“We’d played what I thought was a pretty tough schedule the first two weeks,” Midway coach Robb Carroll said in reference to Wetumka and Porter.
But they’re 1-0 in the games that count — something others will gun for tonight.
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