Eagles go to playoffs, draw powerful opponent

Sunday, November 1, 2009
By Gary Johnson

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.

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Wonder if they'd be interested in letting Cascade host a game on their field. It would take a small miracle to get Cascade's field in shape to host a game by next week.

-- Posted by Mike Molder on Mon, Nov 2, 2009, at 1:38 PM

Now - the question is WILL the coaching staff of Central keep the same 8-10 players on both sides of the ball?

Will they need to travel light to Clinton or take everyone, so that they can watch these same players run like dogs for this coaching staff?

Opportunity has knocked COACH, it's time you LISTEN - go back watch the films, check your stats - the games we WON we won with a TEAM of players - and those we LOST - we lost playing individuals!

-- Posted by LocalCitizen on Mon, Nov 2, 2009, at 6:06 PM

Jason plays the best players, just so happens they are the same 8-10 players as you say, but I would bet he plays with 11! ;-)

-- Posted by schsteacher on Mon, Nov 2, 2009, at 7:47 PM

I'm not so sure about that! They are still just young men and only good for so long on the field.

And those 11 obviously can't win by themselves, but when they mix it up - guess what happens!

-- Posted by LocalCitizen on Mon, Nov 2, 2009, at 8:50 PM

I agree with LocalCitizen; it's hard to catch the opposing teams "offguard" when they know the play will be (85% of the time) a "Stewart keeper up the middle". Surprise Clinton High School with something they don't see on film. Start, or at least, substitute some of these boys standing on the sidelines who have practiced just as hard all year long. Just might be surprised at the results and give you a headstart on next year's team.

-- Posted by reilly on Tue, Nov 3, 2009, at 7:27 AM