PIKEVILLE, Tenn. – Bledsoe County football coach Jason Reel was feeling a touch of déjà vu this week and, yes, he has been here before.
“I remember we had a 10-win season and faced Alcoa in the second [playoff] round up there,” he said. “I know it was my junior year, but I couldn’t tell you the score.”
Alcoa won that 1995 game 38-6, but the Tornadoes are on the road this time and will be in Pikeville tonight to challenge the 10-1 Warriors, who’ll be looking for their first 11-win season and much more.
Much of Bledsoe’s hopes are pinned on quarterback Cody Holloway, the senior who last week reached and then surpassed the 50 career touchdown pass mark.
“I know we’ll have to play a good game. In the playoffs competition always gets harder,” he said. “We need to play as a team and we have to play a mistake-free game. As long as we continue to do that, I think we’ll be all right.”
Holloway has reached 300 passing yards on at least two occasions this year, and he threw for three touchdowns and ran for another in the Warriors’ 44-25 win over Meigs County last week.
“That was probably one of my best games overall, I guess, because the ball was distributed evenly but more importantly because we got the win,” said Holloway, who completed 13 of 20 passes against the Tigers.
“His importance to the team goes beyond just being a quarterback,” Reel said. “He has embraced the role that the quarterback is the person everybody on the offensive side is going to look at and listen to. He controls and manages, and that’s a huge part of his game.”
Asked who was Bledsoe’s best player, Holloway said, “We have several good players. I think if something happened to me that [wide receiver] Jeremiah Gilbert could step in and do a good job. You’re talking about good players in the offensive and defensive lines and in the backfields. They probably would roll right on by just moving some guys around.”
For the year, Holloway has thrown for 2,130 yards and 23 touchdowns. This past week he was allowed to extend his own involvement, rushing seven times for 52 yards rather than handing off to Brandon Smith or Holden Boynton or throwing to Gilbert, Smith, Caleb Smith or Nathaniel Collins.
This will be his 23rd start, and the experience has allowed him to outgrow the egotism that often comes with the position.
“I might have been a little bit last year,” he responded when asked if he had ever gotten full of himself. “I wasn’t used to seeing my name in the paper. Now I think more about the team. I just play. I like to get the yards and my name in the paper, but I don’t care as long as we win. Nobody likes a cocky person.”
Holloway would prefer to share or even deflect glory to his teammates, but he is the one who played several games despite having mononucleosis. No one knew he had mono, just that he was weak and tired out easily, until he was over the worst of it. He played, though, because his teammates needed him.
“He’s unreal. He is an extension of the coaching staff,” Reel said. “He knows what we want to do as a whole. He’s doing the small things. He’s doing what he should be doing because he understands the big picture.”