By Gene Schallenberg
For the first time in a long time, New Waverly is waltzing into the postseason with a sense of ease and comfort, not the nervous emotions that generally come with playing beyond the regular season.
The Bulldogs are back in the playoffs, after advancing to the regional semifinals last season, but for most of the players, it won’t be as overwhelming as it was when they played in New Waverly’s first postseason game in years.
While there may be some nerves for the first-timers, for the majority of the Bulldogs, it’ll be business as usual.
“It’s pretty good. We can’t be too excited or we’ll get off task,” senior quarterback X’Zavious Harrison said.
The Bulldogs open their playoffs against Woodville today. The Class 2A Region III bi-district game will be played at Huntsville’s Bowers Stadium and will kick off at 7:30 p.m.
“Last year, we played well in some aspects of the game,” Harrison said as he looked back on the successes and failures the Bulldogs had in the playoffs last season. “We didn’t do what we know we could do. This year we’re going to execute every play and every down on both sides. We’re going to try to keep that attitude through the rest of the playoffs.”
One of the lessons the Bulldogs (8-2 overall) learned is how difficult it is to reach the postseason, and by that token, every team they’ll face will present a different challenge, no matter what round it is.
Woodville (5-5) is a clear-cut example. The Eagles come in and offer a daunting challenge to the New Waverly defense: stop Calib Hadnot, Woodville’s quarterback.
Much like New Waverly’s signal-caller, Hadnot can create some havoc once he breaks out of the pocket and gets into the open field.
“We’ve got to stop number three,” Harrison said. “He’s pretty shifty, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
But Hadnot isn’t the Eagles’ only weapon.
“On the defensive side of the ball, we’ve got to line up properly to what formations they’re going to give us and they’ll give us a bunch,” head coach Ken Craig said. “They’ve got some quality running backs. You can’t say it’s just the quarterback because that’s just not the case. They wouldn’t be playing in Week 11 if they were one-dimensional.”
While part of the plan is to try to slow down Woodville, the other side is for the Bulldogs to be as explosive on offense as they had been this season.
During its five-game district slate New Waverly scored nearly 200 points, including 58 combined against playoff-bound Corrigan-Camden, which headed to the Division I bracket and will face Kirbyville tonight, and the Buffalo Bison, who lost to 10th-ranked Newton 40-3 on Thursday.
“We’ve got to execute on offense,” Craig said. “We’ve got to do things that we do well, like running the ball and when the opportunity rises, pass it.
“We’ve got to come off the ball and bring it to them. We need to win the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and start doing it right from the beginning of the game.”
