In October, another difficult blow was dealt to the high school and community when a pair of students was fatally injured in a car accident. The accident made regional newscasts and rocked the Mitchell community.
Many teams dealing with a small dose of the difficulties surrounding friends and neighbors would easily have written off something as seemingly trivial as a game. However, the Mitchell football team rallied around its common hardships and has reached an historic place in the athletic annals of Mountaineer football with its first playoff win since 1989 and deepest playoff run since the 1986 season.
I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to cover both our Avery Vikings as well as the Mitchell Mountaineers with game stories each week in The Avery Journal-Times this season. I am grateful for the help from the Mitchell athletics department, statisticians and coaching staff, specifically to stat master Chris Pittman and his comrades, for the number-crunching they do on a weekly basis.
Last Friday, Nov. 26, the Mitchell football team continued its amazing ride toward a state championship with a 47-22 win over Avery in the third round of the state high school football playoffs.
Although the loss was stinging to Viking Nation, many fans have shared with me that, although they are disappointed about Avery’s elimination, they are rooting for the Mountaineers to pull off what many would deem an upset against the Albemarle Bulldogs this week in the state 1-AA semifinals.
“We knew we had a good group of juniors coming in, and we lost one of our seniors in the car accident early on. Six of our seniors play and have stepped up. It took a while for us to put in our new offense this season and for the team to come together,” Mitchell head coach Russell Barnett told me in a one-on-one interview on Wednesday, Nov. 24, after a Mountaineer afternoon practice in Ledger. “The boys came together despite the adversity, but it took a toll on us and put football in perspective. It’s a game and a sport. The kids know that, and it’s something that has taken their minds off the pain we were going through during those times we had here. The resilience of the kids was tremendous, and I couldn’t expect more out of them.”
Players like senior running back Shawn Jackson, junior quarterback Justin Hughes and offensive and defensive leaders Troy Self and Ben Smith, respectively, have provided the team with maturity and leadership both on and off the field. The team has took its cue from its coaches, who have provided a steady hand of guidance and genuine concern for the kids that they have been trusted as stewards over.
“We have a great group of men on our coaching staff. It’s truly been a pleasure to work with them and to coach these kids. I can’t believe that we’re here practicing over the Thanksgiving week,” Barnett said of the team and season. “It seems the season has gone by fast this year.”
The ups and downs of the regular season, which ended with losses in four of its final six games, served to galvanize a club that since has reeled off three consecutive wins in do-or-die situations, each of which while playing away from home.
“The kids have enjoyed this playoff run. I knew we could make some noise because of the teams we’ve faced during the conference. We played a tough schedule. With games against the likes of Polk, Owen, Mountain Heritage, Avery and Hendersonville it’s going to make you tough,” Barnett said. “Every team in our conference was battle tested and it showed as the teams have had successful playoff runs.”
It is amazing to see a team that at one point early in the season fielded only 21 varsity players experience such highs and lows in a matter of months. The development meant the coaching staff had to adjust not only the lineup in the early going, but to a point adjust its expectations of its squad.
“At first, getting down to just 21 players after the accident adjusted things. We had to move kids around a little more and kids had to back up other spots. If one kid went down we’d have to move three or four players,” Barnett added. “Our expectancies changed, sure. But as we’ve seen these kids grow, we’ve set our goals high and these kids picked them up, and I’m so proud of how the kids took on the challenge.”
Most outside the Mountaineer program point to the team’s 24-23 win over then-unbeaten Polk County as the turning point of the season. Interestingly enough, however, the coach points to another game a week earlier that served as a watershed moment in the 2010 campaign.
“We had a bad loss against Brevard early in the year after Polk and Owen had thumped them. It took a while for our juniors to believe that they could play at this level, go on the road and win. The game with Owen at home before we played Polk was a really hard fought game. At that point I sensed that was a turning point for us,” Barnett explained. “Even though we lost, I told them that the score on the clock didn’t indicate the amount of effort they gave, and that I took that as a win for us. The next week we played Polk and we built upon that. The kids started gaining confidence after that Owen game that we could play with any team, and we ran with that confidence. Of course, we came away with a win over Polk, and to beat a team like that, you have to have a lot of things go right for you, and they did that night. We just went with it from there.”
Perhaps a more astounding facet to Mitchell’s success this fall has been that the team will be playing its sixth consecutive road game and fourth in a row in the playoffs. One would be hard-pressed to find a large number of teams who have been able to win high-stakes playoff games away from home as Mitchell has achieved thus far.
“We’ve been on the road for the fifth straight week (editor’s note: six weeks after last week’s playoff win) and we call these boys ‘road warriors’,” Barnett said. “We’re just enjoying the ride right now and enjoying the fans coming out to the games. The community has rallied around us and supported us the whole way. This coaching staff has taken a lot of responsibility on themselves and they’ve given tremendous effort, and these kids took on playing this many games on the road as a challenge. We’re really proud of the way things have gone thus far.”
Good luck to the Mountaineers this week in Albemarle as it attempts to represent the Western Highlands Conference and us mountain folk in the state championship game.
