The merchants might close up shop early Friday in Jasper, and Marion County as a whole may resemble a ghost town. Many of its inhabitants will be traveling to playoff football games.

The last time the South Pittsburg and Marion County teams combined for such a stir, one could fill up his pickup for little more than $1 per gallon. It was in 1995 that South Pittsburg reached the state semifinals and Marion County won its third state championship in four years.

While South Pittsburg’s Pirates go Friday to Hartsville to play Trousdale County, Marion’s Warriors are coming to Chattanooga to play Boyd-Buchanan. The Pirates have made a habit of deep state playoff runs and won last year’s Class 1A state title, but Marion County had won just a single playoff game since that 1995 title until this year.

The burning question around the Sequatchie Valley is “Are the Warriors really back?”

“I think we’re a long way from being as good as they were back then,” said Troy Boeck, Marion’s first-year head coach. “We have been fortunate to play well and we’ve had the ball bounce our way. Hard work and effort create some of those situations, and the kids have been playing hard.”

Dave Daffron has seen the best and worst of times for Marion County, having watched the Warriors since the early 1980s. He is bolder than Boeck.

“Yeah, they’re back. This is no fluke by any stretch of the imagination,” Daffron said.

Marion had a good jamboree showing, and its opener at South Pittsburg turned into a $25,000 gate for the Pirates. However, a lopsided loss to the Pirates was followed by a close Region 3-2A loss to Boyd-Buchanan, and it looked like another mediocre season was in the making.

While the attendance wasn’t back to the turnaway crowds who flocked to their games in the state championship years, it grew as the Warriors pieced together their 10 wins in a row, including one over perennial region bully Tyner.

Daffron credits Boeck, the ex-South Pittsburg assistant who is the last University of Tennessee at Chattanooga player to be Southern Conference defensive player of the year.

“Troy is very humble. He commands respect, but he also earns that respect,” Daffron said. “People in the community had reservations when he was named head coach, but I think all those reservations are gone. I have seen young men grow up and learn to accept their responsibilities.”

Boeck is a big believer in discipline and a strong work ethic, Daffron added, unaware that the coach had emphasized those points in an interview earlier in the day.

“As long as you have the work ethic we have had this year, we’ll be successful,” Boeck said. “A great football team is not the one that makes sensational plays every now and then but the one that makes the average plays all the time and the great play every now and then.”

Unlike past Marion teams that featured the likes of Eric Westmoreland, who went on to play at the University of Tennessee and in the NFL, this team has no superstars. The closest thing to it is probably running back/safety Joe Muir.

“When we have a big game, Joe is all over the field defensively. He made big runs and caught passes,” Boeck said. “We have several wide receivers that are probably average players or slightly above average. There isn’t that one guy that will draw triple coverage, but they all play well. Same thing in the offensive line. We don’t have that one dominating player, and it’s the same thing on defense. Our linebackers are average or slightly above average, but they give all they have, and it’s been that way all year.

“When you start winning, you can keep preaching those things and they believe it.

“We haven’t had many games where we have been able to coast to a victory,” Boeck said. “We won 18-13 last week against a team (Smith County) that probably had better athletes. We won because we played better as a team and because we overcame some serious chances to fold.”

So Boyd-Buchanan will see another side to Marion on Friday.

“I think there will be a monstrous crowd,” Boeck said.

Marion opened the Buccaneers’ eyes the first time around, falling 21-20 in what would have been a walk-over in other years.

“This team is better than the one that lost to South Pittsburg and Boyd-Buchanan,” Daffron said.

But Boyd-Buchanan knows that.

“Troy has them believing,” Bucs coach Grant Reynolds said. “They play with a lot of emotion and a lot of energy. They’re feeling it right now, and that’s a tribute to him and his staff. That’s what it takes, and he has found the right formula for doing that.”

Said Bucs linebacker Seth Emery: “They have improved a lot over last year, and I think we realized when the game started that they came to play. We for sure won’t be taking them lightly this time.”

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