WESTON, W.Va. — Lewis County football coach Dustin Cogar is well aware the odds are stacked against the Minutemen in Saturday’s first-round playoff matchup at Fairmont Senior.
But then again, haven’t the odds been stacked against Lewis County since this season began?
The Minutemen finished 1-9 in 2017 and opened this season with back-to-back games against Bridgeport and the Polar Bears, losing the two contests by a combined score of 98-24.
Since then, Cogar’s team has won six of eight games. On its bye last week, Lewis County was still in need of North Marion to beat Grafton to qualify for the postseason. The Huskies did just that by getting the better of the Bearcats 35-13, enabling the Minutemen to stay in the top 16.
“It was a long week to try to keep the kids motivated knowing there was not a game at the end of the week. We had to do a little TV watching and everybody was up late Friday night seeing who did what,” Cogar said. “We were big North Marion fans last week. To have that happen and everything shake out the way it did was really exciting for us.”
The No. 16 seed Minutemen responded to their 0-2 start by winning consecutive games against Elkins, Braxton County and Preston.
Following a 21-17 loss at Robert C. Byrd, the Minutemen had little margin for error. But Lewis County topped Buckhannon-Upshur and North Marion, before securing a winning season with a 10-0 victory at Philip Barbour.
With an opportunity to seal a playoff berth in Week 10, the Minutemen fell flat against Liberty Harrison, 35-14, but they’ve managed to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2014 — when they were in Class AAA — anyhow.
“The kids all did their own thing Friday night and the coaches were pretty much on their own, but everybody was texting and talking,” Cogar said. “It went out on Facebook and things like that. The positive reaction from the community was pretty nice Saturday morning and even coming into this morning.”
Now the question becomes how much has Cougar’s team improved since a 53-7 loss to the unbeaten Polar Bears in Week 2?
“Fairmont Senior is the one seed and they’re talented sideline to sideline,” Cogar said. “We’ve seen them before. We saw them Week 2 and now we get to see if we’ve gotten any better.”
One positive for LCHS in advance of its short trip to East-West Stadium is that the Minutemen have essentially been playing with their backs against the wall since the 0-2 start.
“We’ve been playing Big 10 (Conference) games all year long and it’s a playoff atmosphere every week for us,” Cogar said. “To come back off those two games with a very physical team like Elkins and be able to do what we did with them sparked us down the road.
“We went through a tough stretch of RCB, Buckhannon, North Marion and to do what we did there to put us in this situation.”
As Fairmont Senior coach Nick Bartic looks to help the Polar Bears make their third straight appearance in the Class AA title game, he knows no opponent can be taken for granted at this stage.
“Having won that first game, they maybe have something they can use in terms of their motivation to see how they’ve progressed as the season has gone on,” Bartic said. “They’re a different team at this point in the season than they were at the beginning of the season.
“We have to get our guys mentally ready and in terms of prep, see what maybe has changed throughout the year as we watch film here and things that they may have tweaked as the season went on.”
While FSHS quarterback Connor Neal is a Kennedy Award candidate and guides an explosive offense, Bartic is eager to see if his team’s defense can repeat its performance from the regular season matchup.
“We did a very good job of being disciplined the first time we played them,” Bartic said. “Our guys read their keys and played the rules of our defense very well and executed. That’s going to be our focus going into Saturday is try to approach it the same way.”