It doesn’t happen very often, and when it does it’s usually weather related. That won’t be the case this week, however, as the Cougar football team travels to Mitchell Stadium Thursday evening to take on the Bluefield Beavers.
Bluefield and Pulaski County have a bit of history. The Cougars own a slight edge in the overall series between the two teams, 9-7, and have outscored the Beavers 353-279 through the years. That’s all fine a dandy, but the history goes a bit deeper.
As the new head coach of Big Creek High School in 1964, legendary former Head Coach Joel Hicks fell to the Merrill Gainer led Beavers 20-0. Two seasons later, Coach Hicks got his first win over the Beavers in a 34-6 route.
In 1969, Coach Hicks moved to Woodrow Wilson High School. His first matchup with the Beavers resulted in a 12-14 loss. The 1970 game was a 22-8 win. Coach Hicks left Woodrow Wilson in 1975 to work as an assistant coach at West Virginia University.
The last time Pulaski County and Bluefield took the field was 2000 in Mitchell Stadium. The Cougars won that game 49-21 under the leadership of Coach Hicks. Coach Hicks went 9-4 with the Cougars against Bluefield. Each of those Pulaski versus Bluefield games was against another legendary head coach, Fred Simon.
Coach Simon came to the Beavers in 1986. He is now entering his 37th season with Bluefield. Last year the Beavers posted a record of 7-3, making it to the third round of the West Virginia State Playoffs. This season they’ve started off 0-2 with losses to Graham and Princeton, two very strong programs.
“They are a team with a ton of tradition and pride,” Cougar Head Coach Cam Akers said. “You don’t see that kind of coach consistency very often. Even in their down years, they are a highly competitive program. They’ve got athletes and they’ve got size. They like physical contact. They can move the ball on you and they can stop you from moving it. For us to find a way to win, we’re going to have to continue to show improvement.”
After looking at the film from the 28-25 loss to Tennessee High School last week, what did the coaching staff find out about the Cougars?
“Our effort was good, but we made way too many mistakes,” Coach Akers said. “We’re not a team that can afford to make a lot of mistakes. We need to cut way back on the penalties. Getting behind the chains is not good for us. I thought we had an overall good effort last week, but again the mistakes were what ended up costing us a win.”
How good is Bluefield compared to the Cougars? How do the two teams match up?
“The only thing that matters is how we perform,” Akers said. “We’re going to focus on doing our jobs the right way. We need to stay on our blocks. We need to make good tackles and not try this arm tackling or reaching stuff we saw some of last week. We need to continue to work on our consistency. You can’t take a play off, period. Our goal is to take on play at a time. If our guys are focused and play like we feel they can, we can do some good things.”
For Pulaski County, the lineup is going to be much of the same.
On offense, sophomore Nolan Dalton (6’2”, 263) will line up at center. Last week, Dalton had to come out of the game during the first half due to possible knee issue. He returned and played the second half. Sophomore Aiden Moore (5’10”, 246) will be at one guard. Senior Diego Turner (5’10”, 219) will be at the other. The guards will be senior Evan Alger (6’3”, 197) and sophomore Hunter Hill (5’11”, 197). The slots will be senior Zach Parker (6’, 146) on one side and a mix of junior Brett Jones (5’10”, 161) and sophomore Tanner Mace (6’, 139) on the other.
Junior Chris Gallimore (6’2”, 182) will be the quarterback. Senior Trevor Burton (5’11”, 185) will be the running back. Wideouts will be senior Neel Davis (6’4”, 204) and junior Marcus Reed (6’4.5”, 193).
Defensively, the front line will feature senior Alan Fernandez (5’10”, 208) at nose and senior Turner and junior Jack Allen (6’1”, 212) to the sides. Junior Tyler Underwood (6’1”, 188) will be on one end with Alger lined up on the other. The middle linebackers will be Burton and junior Nicholas Woolwine (6’, 170).
The corners will be a mix of Parker on one side with senior Kyle O’Neil (6’1”, 150) and junior Trey Landreth (6’1”, 165) on the other. The safeties will be Jones and Mace.
Senior Nathan Pratt normally handles the kicking and punting duties for the Cougars, but with no JV game last week we got a preview of freshman Bryant Nottingham on the kickoff team. The younger brother of former Cougar standout kicker and quarterback Marcus Johnson kicked very well.
Kickoff from Mitchell Stadium in Bluefield is set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday. The game will be aired on 107.1 FM WPSK beginning at 6:30 p.m. with the pregame show featuring Steve Adams and former Cougar player and coach Randy Dunnigan.