SETH- As the final seconds ticked off the clock in Sherman’s 48-34 victory over Wirt County, the Tide turned their attention to the postseason.
The victory improved Sherman to 6-4 and clinched the school’s first playoff berth since 2018.
“We had a pretty good season,” Sherman coach Kevin Buzzard said. “It started out good, but we hit a little rough spot there in the middle, but we came up with there in the end to shoot us into the playoffs.”
Sherman tied for 11th in the final West Virginia Secondary Schools Class A ratings and based on tiebreakers was seeded 12th in the playoff field and will face fifth-seeded Mount View Friday night at Vic Nystrom Stadium.
“This is huge for the community especially being in a rural area it’s hard to compete with the bigger single A schools,” Buzzard said. “It means a lot to everybody here especially the coaching staff that works hard and give back to the community.”
It will be the second meeting of the season between the Tide and Golden Knights. The Golden Knights won the first meeting 44-18 on Oct. 1 at Sherman, but despite the loss Buzzard feels his team has nothing to lose.
“Hopefully it will be a little bit better contest than the first where we just go down on ourselves,” Buzzard said. “We know what they are going to do and we know what we want to do so we just got to line up execute and stop it.”
Sherman was held to 154 yards of total offense in the first meeting and committed three turnovers.
“They are a good team and they have a lot of speed,” Buzzard said. “They are well coached and we have to find a way to keep the ball out of their hands and win the turnover battle, which hurt us last game.”
Sherman started the season with a 4-1 record, but lost three-of-five to finish the season with a 6-4 record. The Tide turned the ball over 16 times during the season, but in their four losses they combined for 11 turnovers.
“That is the story of our season is that we turned the ball over,” Buzzard said. “It’s kind of hard to recover from big turnovers.”
Hopes of hosting a first round playoff game were dashed in back-to-back losses to Greenbrier West and Meadow Bridge before last week’s win over Wirt County.
The Tide is 1-4 against playoff competition this season defeating Class A No. 7 James Monroe, but losing to Class AA No. 9 Scott, and Class A No. 5 Mount View, No. 11 Greenbrier West and No. 14 Meadow Bridge.
