By TOM BONE
BLUEFIELD — It was all business on Thursday at the Bluefield High School football locker room. In the wake of back-to-back losses to Charlotte Country Day School (23-15) and to Gate City (22-6), the lessons continued after school hours for the Beavers.
It’s homecoming week at Bluefield High, but the celebration is not on the radar screen for the coaches. Getting the team in the right frame of mind for the second half of the season is what counts in their minds.
Bluefield (3-2) enters tonight’s game with the Mount View Golden Knights (1-5) with something to prove to their coaches.
Head coach Fred Simon said, “After losing two games in a row, I hope there’s no need to say a whole lot. We hope that our guys have learned some lessons and hope we can improve on some things.”
Simon was asked what he saw from his team at Gate City last weekend.
“Not what I want to see — yet,” he said. “That’s all I’m going to say. It’s not what we need to do, and not where we need to be right now. Hopefully, we can start gaining some of that, and little by little, we’ll get it there.”
He said the Beavers need to be “playing more as a team. I didn’t feel like we played as a team, with effort. Hopefully, we’ll find a way to do better.”
Mount View extended their losing streak to three games last Friday with a 62-8 loss to Westside, after spotting the visitors a 28-0 halftime lead.
Simon is expecting stiff competition from the McDowell County squad nonetheless.
“As with every team we play, we feel like we’ll get their best,” he said, “and so we’re preparing for that. And I’m sure we’ll get it.”
Drawing on his years of dissecting Mount View-Bluefield games, he said, “They’ve always had athletes, and they always play us very well. And we don’t look for anything any different.”
On the plus side, senior all-stater Marcus Patterson will be back on the field after sitting out a game-and-a-half recovering from a concussion sustained against Charlotte Country Day School.
“Marcus is good. He’s ready to go, and we hope we’ll get some good things to happen for him this Friday,” Simon said.
That will take some additional pressure off fellow senior Jake Lilly, who has 562 yards unofficially rushing this year to lead the Beavers.
He ran for 175 yards against Charlotte Country Day — primarily out of a one-back set after Patterson and starting quarterback Levi Beckett were lost to injury. He ran up 107 more yards on the ground at Gate City.
Having Lilly and Patterson back on the field at the same time “means a lot to us,” Simon said. “We just hope that they can play up to their potential, and, in turn, as they do that, we hope that the rest of the team equals the challenge.”
Patterson’s return is doubtless a boost to the offensive game plan, but perhaps not the only one fans will see this evening. Simon said, “It gives us variety there, and we hope to find a few other weapons that we can use, too.”
On defense, Patterson’s impact will also be welcome, the coach said. “Marcus has been there a long time. He’s a good leader, and I’m sure his presence helps quite a bit.”
At the midpoint in its season, the Beavers are tied with PikeView for 10th place in Class AA in the official computer ratings that will ultimately lock in the 16 playoff teams. Bluefield is ranked eighth in Class AA in the Charleston Daily Mail weekly sportswriters’ poll.
But with five games still to play in the regular season, Simon had a simple answer about the significance of the computer ratings.
“Nothing,” he said.
“We just hope, at the end of the year, to have a shot in the playoffs, like we always do. That’s what we’re shooting for — to play each game, one at a time; to get better; and hopefully to have a chance to get in the playoffs.
“And once we do that, we’ll see what happens.”
The top eight teams will host a first-round playoff game. Simon said, “Of course, we always like that, but as long as you get in, you have a chance. And if you don’t get in, you don’t have a chance. We just hope to have that.”
Attempts to contact Mount View head coach Leon Gravely on Thursday were unsuccessful.
— Contact Tom Bone at
tbone@bdtonline.com
