There’s always a little extra electricity around the first Friday night of the prep football playoffs.
Knowing that, and believing that all 10 teams from the Chattanooga area who had earned the right to host a first-round game deserved to be highlighted, we made a plan for seven writers to cover individual games while I made quick stops at the three remaining schools – all in Marion County and located close enough for a whirlwind tour to be possible.
I can’t imagine there are many other counties where 100 percent of the schools not only reached the playoffs but had teams good enough to host first-round games, but that’s the case for Marion County, South Pittsburg and Whitwell, which all cruised into next week’s second round, as expected. Those three teams blistered their competition by a combined score of 134-13, with South Pitt and Whitwell earning mercy-rule wins.
That will assure at least another week for the coffee shop coaches to debate just how much further their teams will advance.
A team from within this football-crazed county has played for a state championship in eight of the past 10 years, and between the talent level and coaching on each sideline, there’s plenty of reason to believe at least one of them will extend that impressive streak.