By: Eric Little – Seven Ranges Radio
No. 1 St. Marys (13-0) vs. No. 6 Williamstown (11-2) – Class A Championship Game – 7:00 p.m. Saturday – Wheeling Island Stadium
The final high school football game to be played in West Virginia this year features two schools that are separated by about 20 miles. St. Marys will play for a state football championship for the first time in school history. Williamstown defeated St. Marys in 2008 to reach the title game during its last championship season. A good way to view this year’s Class A state football championship would be from the viewpoint of St. Marys’ head coach Jodi Mote.
“It’s new for me, just because I wasn’t there for this game in the regular season,” Mote said, on the challenges of playing an opponent the Blue Devils had seen in the regular season. “I prepared for them, but I wasn’t there. So this is my first opportunity playing them.”
If you’ll remember, the Tuesday before these two teams met in week six, Mote received the scare of his life: a stroke that threw a number of things into disarray. The most important of those were the lives of Mote and his family. Of secondary importance, the lives of Mote’s players – who clearly wanted to rally around their beloved coach.
Finally, preparations for a game featuring the Mid-Ohio Valley’s two biggest small school rivals. St. Marys built an early lead on a rainy, sloppy night in Williamstown and held on as Yellowjacket quarterback Dakota Watson tried to will his team to victory in the closing minutes. The 20-18 St. Marys win marked their third straight against Williamstown after failing to defeat the Yellowjackets in every try since 1999, including two postseason meetings.
Make no mistake, even though Mote wasn’t present the last time these two teams played, his presence was felt through gestures of kindness that will not be forgotten. And the familiarity between these two programs permeates.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Williamstown. I have a tremendous amount of respect for (Williamstown head coach) Terry (Smith),” Mote said, “What they did during the time that I had the stroke – putting my name on their marquee and all that stuff, I’ll never forget that. With that said, they’re a rival and it’ll be two great programs going at it on the Island.”
Familiarity is not a foreign concept for Smith when it comes to big games. The fates of Williamstown and Wheeling Central have been tied multiple times in the semifinals and on Wheeling Island.
“We’ve played Wheeling Central quite a bit and we knew what they were going to do,” Smith said. “With St. Marys, everybody goes by first names, so there’s a familiarity for sure.
For St. Marys, the road to Wheeling Island culminated with a 20-14 semifinal win over Clay-Battelle in the final game ever played at the school venerable Imlay Field. Mote and his brothers played on Imlay Field, and Mote’s father Gail coached at St. Marys in the late 70’s and early 80’s, so to send the facility out with a win made Saturday a fulfilling end to an emotional journey.
“Going to Wheeling was separate. The Imlay Field thing; being that last game there, after 101 years, the last thing you want to do is lose. And we were fortunate enough to win. And that’ll forever be remembered as the last thing ever to happen there,” Mote said, on the feelings and emotions of the day.
“It starts with your kids and what they buy into and obviously with your staff and your community. And then my family coming in – and I really believe my family came in for the Imlay thing. And that’s what set my father and my brothers on the edge.”
The Blue Devils rallied on Saturday from a 7-6 halftime deficit and at one point in the second half, led by two touchdowns. St. Marys created the difference-maker on defense by intercepting Clay-Battelle four times. Two of those belonged to Addison O’Brien, who credited the work of the St. Marys front four in multiple postgame interviews. Mote knew the Cee Bees, and particularly quarterback Jarrett Hockenberry, would make a difficult matchup.
“I knew going up against them was going to be a challenge. Their quarterback (Hockenberry) played for Morgantown, not as a quarterback, but as a receiver. I knew with him getting healthy and getting their running back healthy, they should be 12-0. I knew they were one of the biggest teams in Class A,” Mote said of his opponent. “But Addison had two interceptions out of our four. The week before it wasn’t him and it was somebody else. It’s been that kind of year where it’s been one guy one week, another guy the next and somebody else after that.”
Williamstown advanced to the title game after a 42-28 win on the road against Tug Valley at Mingo Central High School in Matewan. Dakota Watson ran for nearly 300 yards and three touchdowns in the win, continuing his march through the postseason. Watson also threw for two other scores. The leadership, and productivity, has been par for the course for Watson this season.
“It’s not just during the postseason, he does the same thing in the regular season,” Smith said of his senior quarterback. “Just a terrific player offensively, defensively and on special teams, whatever. He’s just really good.”
For the Yellowjackets, making such a long trip at this point of the playoffs is a new venture, but Williamstown was ready to play the cards they were dealt.
“We kinda figured after we lost two games we’d have a tough way to go. We were fortunate to host the second round. So we kinda all knew it ahead of time,” Smith said about having to travel a long way for a semifinal game. “I think the kids knew it, though you try to focus one week at a time. I don’t think it was that big of a deal.”
An emerging threat for Watson in this Williamstown offense is Trevor Hoosier. Already a force on defense – he set the school’s single-season sack record against Tug Valley weekend – Hoosier is getting more involved offensively each week. Hoosier was the recipient of one of Watson’s two touchdown passes – the second straight week Hoosier’s scored on offense. Smith says Hoosier’s season has been a byproduct of the amount of work he’s done.
“We’re really happy for him. He works hard, he deserves it,” Smith said. “He started for us last year, defensively. He just set a school record with 15 sacks on Friday. He’s had a terrific year and if you’re around him very much, you kind of expect it.
Both coaching staffs will have to deal with the rare challenge of preparing to face an opponent for the second time in the same season. For Smith, the key will be not to overthink things and let the familiarity between the two programs lead the way.
“You just try to do what you’ve done every week by analyzing video and discussing personnel matchups and things of that nature. Not many changes,” Smith said. “Maybe you just step back and don’t worry about it because you’ve known a kid since he was seven or eight years old. You just say, hey…we gotta play these guys.”
For Mote, it was pretty easy not to look too far ahead toward the possibility of a rematch with the Yellowjackets for the state title.
“I can’t remember if this is the first time we’ve been in separate brackets, but I didn’t think it was that difficult to stay focused each week,” Mote said. “We’ve been in the playoffs before. We had to prepare for our opponent and they had to prepare for theirs.”
Mote, ever the ambassador for the Little Kanawha Conference, put the matchup into perspective from yet another angle.
“It’s great for the Little Kanawha Conference. You’re going to have a winner that represents the conference. You’re going to have two Little Kanawha Conference participants,” Mote said. “That, in and of itself, should say something about the conference.”
The first-timer on Wheeling Island, Mote knows he’ll have to strike a balance between enjoying the experience and striving for normalcy with and for his players.
“I want to do my best to keep everything normal, but at the same time I think it’s important for them to enjoy the experience. So it’s going to be a challenge for me personally as a head coach because I’ve never been in this situation. It’ll be a challenge for us as a coaching staff,” Mote said. “But once the first quarter starts, it’s about playing three phases for four quarters and then things are in your control. But until that time, it’ll be tough. But this is our first one, so we’ll just have to do our best with it.”
Smith knows that getting to the Island is also a victory in and of itself.
“Well, we wanna enjoy it. One thing that we’ve done is to tell the kids to take a deep breath, look around and don’t make such a big deal out of everything. It’s not the end of the world, win or lose,” Smith said. “We just say ‘hey, get your eyes up.’ Because a lot of times kids don’t get their eyes up and pay attention. It’s like the old saying goes, you gotta stop and smell the roses.”
For both coaches and the players involved on both sides, it took a tremendous amount of sacrifice and good fortune to reach this point. No matter the outcome, expect a great game…played by student-athletes that respect each other, their communities and the student-athletes and community on the other side. In other words, the final high school football game to be played in West Virginia this season will be a fitting embodiment of all the great things about high school football in West Virginia.
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