The goal this year for the Meadow Bridge football team was perfectly clear – playoffs or bust.
Playoffs it is.
Anchored by a strong senior class and a bruising ground game, the Wildcats realized their postseason dream with a 7-3 mark.
Meadow Bridge ended the season rated No. 10 and will travel to No. 7 Pendleton County Friday night for a 7 p.m. kick-off.
“My expectation, our expectations, were to definitely be in the playoff field,” Meadow Bridge head coach Dwayne Reichard said. “Realistically, we are a little lower than I would have wished, but we are happy to be on the inside. If we didn’t have a successful year, we could be wrapping things up.”
Meadow Bridge has historically lived by the run and this year’s team has been no different.
Kaiden Sims has carried the ball 205 times for a total of 2,236 yards and 27 touchdowns. The junior tailback’s biggest night came against Gilmer County when he ran for 409 yards and six touchdowns.
Needing wins over Montcalm and Buffalo later in the season to secure a spot in the playoffs, Sims tallied 385 yards and had six touchdowns against the Generals, along with 352 yards and four scores against the Bison, leading to a pair of wins.
“It is no secret that Kaiden is going to get the majority of the touches,” Reichard said. “When we have to go elsewhere, we struggle to be very successful.”
While Sims has been responsible for the bulk of the workload this year, the Wildcats have also received solid production from senior quarterback Braydon Thomas and junior Trip Roles.
“Against Buffalo, Trip had a pretty decent game with about 90 yards. Braydon only had a few carries, but had 60-some yards with a long touchdown run,” Reichard said. “The focus after the Clay-Battelle game became where can we get production from other people. Hopefully we have been able to find a little bit of that.”
Meadow Bridge appeared well on its way to a playoff berth after going 3-1 to start the season, but the infamous Clay-Battelle game placed those postseason dreams in question.
“The Clay-Battelle game was a game that I felt like we should win,” Reichard said. “I looked at what they had coming back against what we had coming back from a year ago. We went on the road and beat them relatively easy a year ago. Kaiden had a 400-yard game up there.”
“Then we come into Meadow Bridge this year and Kaiden only played the first half before leaving with a shoulder injury,” Reichard went on to say. “Trip Roles was unavailable, so we were down depth-wise in our backfield. Even with all of what happened, we still had a shot at the end to win. We felt like it was one that got by, so we kind of went into a mode where we needed to run off some wins here if we plan on making a playoff run.”
The Wildcats answered the bell with three straight wins to lock themselves into the playoff berth for the first time since 2021.
After some delays due to court battles across the state, Meadow Bridge can now focus its attention fully on the Wildcats from Pendleton County.
Pendleton will be making its first appearance in the postseason since it had a three-year run from 2018-20. The Pendleton Wildcats are also 7-3 with all three losses coming to teams in 2024 Class A playoffs.
Quarterback Colton Roberson leads a pass-heavy attack and has thrown for 1,640 yards and 22 touchdowns against just three interceptions. The young freshman also has eight rushing scores.
“He is a kid that can extend plays and he has good quickness. He will throw the ball down the field, but at the same time he can hurt you with his legs,” Reichard said. “He does things for them that puts them in a good place offensively to score points.”
Roberson spreads the ball around to five different receivers led by senior Josiah Kimble with 832 yards on 40 receptions. Kimble also has 16 touchdowns.
Prior to 2017, the teams met every year since the inception of Pendleton County High School in 1998. Pendleton owns 11 wins, including the last three, while Meadow Bridge has eight wins.
The winner of Friday’s contest will move into the quarterfinal round next week to battle the survivor of No. 2 Tucker County and No. 15 East Hardy.
