Week 8

Brian: The Coach A Show is brought to your way by the Barn Store, where they're all about creating quality spaces for your storage needs. Whether you need a barn, a storage unit, a garage, they've got you covered. It's a family-owned and operated business. The Barn Store, proud supporters of Wolfpack Football. Hello, Wolfpack Nation, and welcome to a special edition of the Coach A Show. I'm your host, T Carter, Voice of the Wolves, with Bill Alexander, Coach A, the head coach of the Liberty Creek Wolves. Coach, there's some interesting news coming out of the TAASAA concerning Liberty Creek. We felt like a special edition of this Coach A show was warranted to enlighten everyone as to the news. Coach, fill us in. Yeah, you know, we knew ⁓ classification numbers were gonna be coming out and ⁓ our number was ten twenty-three and and honestly we felt like at ten twenty-three that was probably gonna give us the opportunity to to stay four A if we wanted to. ⁓ they take the to three basically there's three hundred football playing public schools, and they take them and just divide them into to equal six into six classes, and when we started counting, we realized that ⁓ that number that separates four A and five A instead of creeping up had actually crept down quite a bit to into into the nine hundreds. And so ⁓ we are going to be playing five A football for the next four seasons. Well five A classification ⁓ does not yet tell us who Liberty Creek's region opponents are. Is that correct? Yeah that's correct. So every schools have until October the second, which is this coming Friday, to ⁓ to tell to tell the TBLSAA whether they want to move up or not and and if they want to play in the football playoff series or not. And so, you know, one of the things you're seeing in the news right now is several schools are choosing not to play in the football playoff series, particularly in the private schools. ⁓ we anticipate there may be a few public schools that choose to do that. There have been a few public schools in the past few cycles that have done that. And so that'll have an impact on who our region opponents are. But we feel like the week that we get back from fall break ⁓ they'll have all that information and they will have divided people into regions and we'll have a pretty good idea of who our region will be when we get back from fall break at some point. Well coach that's gonna be particularly interesting for for the Wolves because it's moved to five A could substantially change the teams that count as region games compared with the current four A schedule. Liberty Creek will actually enter five A relatively close to the bottom of the enrollment range. I would think the more interesting issue ⁓ for you and the program is be which schools TWSAA puts in the Liberty Creek C region. What's your gut feelings on these considerations? Yeah, you know, I think we knew we've known we felt pretty certain for the past ⁓ you know, several weeks and months that we were either gonna be a really large four A school or a really small five A school and ⁓ and and we're gonna be in five A, you know, and I did a a newspaper interview last week and And told people that we're really excited about moving into five A. We knew in twenty twenty two when Liberty Creek opened that that's where we were going to get eventually. ⁓ that's a league that I played in way back in the eighties. It was called nine triple A back then, but it's the league in the schools for the most part that I played against. And ⁓ you know, it was ⁓ it's the league that I coached in for a long time before we came here. And I think our kids are super excited. So for us ⁓ I think it's gonna put us in what the current region now is Beach and Hendersonville and Station Camp and Portland and Hunters Lane. And so ⁓ we all those schools remain five A. And so ⁓ they'll certainly probably insert us into that region. and then ⁓ we'll have to see I think certainly the five Sumner County schools, us Portland, Station Camp, Hendersonville, and Beach will for certain be in that region and then You know, Hunters Lane, I guess, could stay with us, or there's a couple of metro schools that are south of town in another region that lost a couple of teams ⁓ out of their region to the six A-fold. And so they could move Hunters Lane down there. ⁓ and there's, you know, McGavick and Lawson are a couple of metro schools. You never know how the Tibbs to LA is going to divide it up. And even ⁓ I think Henry County, who ⁓ is is pretty far west of us and is pretty close to Clarksville. And there's a pretty large Clarksville contingent of five A schools. But ⁓ I know at one point when I was coaching in that league, Henry County was in there with us. And so we really won't know who our ⁓ who our region is until they they produce that. But we certainly feel pretty confident ⁓ that we are going to be with those other four Sumner County schools. That's a fascinating possibility if ⁓ it it would be a Sumner County heavy, heavy leaning region. Rid ⁓ and so if we look at that region, TWS WA then emphasizes some geography in the in in in and that movement of the four schools. And that creates a possibility of a dramatically different environment for Liberty Creek and would make for an extremely interesting Sumner County football storyline in twenty twenty seven. What about those Sumner County schools? Yeah, I mean, I think ⁓ I it's gonna be exciting for our community. Our guys are excited because they wanna play. Those are their friends, you know, they see their friends play in those big games. ⁓ obviously I think the crowds are gonna be enormous. ⁓ so I think it's exciting for them. And ⁓ you know, as excited as we are, we also know ⁓ that it's a step up in competition from what we've been playing too. And ⁓ and so, you know, we may take some lumps early on. ⁓ you know, we played Beach and J V last Monday night and they beat us forty-two to fourteen. And so ⁓ you know, we know the competition is going to be much different than what we've been playing. But I I think we're excited to take the step. I think where our school is and where our program is right now, it's probably more prepared to make a jump into a higher classification than it was two years ago when we moved from three A to four A, but ⁓ you know, I think it's super exciting. I think it's gonna be exciting to have Friday nights playing against those teams, but we also realize it's gonna be a unique challenge for us that ⁓ you know, we're gonna have to get ready to play against really good competition. Well, I think, coach, to summarize this is that Liberty Creek isn't moving to five A because of what it accomplished on Friday nights. It's moving because of the enrollment. ⁓ the Wolfs will go from nine seventy seven students in the previous class classification to the count of one thousand twenty three that you ⁓ mentioned earlier, which pushed us across that five A threshold. The real question isn't whether Liberty Creek can compete with the five A size schools. We've done that. We we beat ⁓ Portland this year, ⁓ forty one to nothing. And and so we know we can compete and ⁓ strong competition always makes you better. ⁓ it like you said, sometimes it takes you a while to get there, but it always makes you better. The big question is who TW TAASAA puts around Liberty Creek when the new 5-8 regions are formed. So, Wolfpack Nation, stay tuned. There's more to come on this story, and we'll keep you abreast of it all. Once again, special thanks to Brian Holloway, production team of the Coach A show for this special edition. ⁓ we want to thank our sponsor, ⁓ the fine folks over at the Barn Store, ⁓ who been with us from day one and ⁓ to you the Wolfpack Nation for your support of our athletic programs, the Coach A Show and Wolfpack Athletics and next year we'll see you with a whole new set of competitions.