Shelbyville Times-Gazette: High School Sports: Eagles go to playoffs, draw powerful opponent (11/01/09)

Coaches talk strategy with the Shelbyville Central Golden Eagles earlier this season. Shelbyville enters the state playoffs Friday.
(T-G File Photo by Gary Johnson)

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Shelbyville Central will play in the TSSAA state playoffs for the second time in three years.

The Golden Eagles (5-5) learned Saturday they earned a wild card berth and will travel to Anderson County to face Clinton (9-0) Friday at 6 p.m. CST.

Clinton was ranked second in last week's Class 5A Associated Press high school football poll.

"We're excited to get in. With this new system, we didn't know for sure and that's a good thing about this new wild card system is you still have a chance if you're not an automatic qualifier from your district. We were lucky enough to get a chance and we'll see what happens," Shelbyville coach Jason Hardy said.

Hardy and his staff had a very busy Saturday morning after they found out the good news.

"Things have really been busy but that's great," Hardy said. "We started calling coaches to try to get film on Clinton, talked to their coach for a while and set up a time to meet him in Cookeville to swap film. We also started the process of making travel arrangements and so forth."

Four teams from District 8-AAA advanced to the playoffs with Tullahoma just missing a wild card spot.

Joining Shelbyville in the Class 5A playoffs from District 8-AAA are Columbia (9-1) and Lawrence County (8-2) while Franklin County (4-6) will compete in Class 6A.