By CAMERON HOVEY
Sheridan High School Student
Hard-hitting, aggressive, talented and hard-working: Those are just a few words used to describe Sheridan football and its players. Playing for Sheridan football, it is an honor and a privilege to be coached by someone as legendary as Coach “Bud” Wright. Football at Sheridan requires a lot of time, dedication and especially hard work. While this season has been all of the above, the ending is not what we wanted. Despite the unwanted ending, Sheridan was able to have a winning and successful season.
This season had two games that were major “dog fights.” One of the toughest games we had all season was against the Eastern Comets for the conference championship. The game was neck and neck the whole time and in the fourth quarter we were able pull together and score enough to maintain a lead and win the conference championship. By far the toughest game all year was in the second round of sectionals against Monroe Central. It had been raining all day before the game and rained all game. For the first three quarters the game was zero to zero and the rain continued to pour the whole game, making it difficult to get traction. During the fourth quarter we wrongly guarded a pass play which led to an 80-yard passing touchdown followed by a two-point conversion. This one play led to the end of our season.
Although our season had a bad ending there were a lot of good parts as well. Senior quarterback Drake Delph said, “I thought it went well. We won conference so that was nice. It would have been awesome to win sectionals and advance farther, but we gave it everything we had so I’m happy about that.”
Drake was the leader of our team and kept our heads together when the other team was trying to bring us down and when the other team would score.
Senior Jimmy Manis, who led the team in rushing yards as fullback, also stated, “Winning conference was a huge highlight for our team. It was for sure one of the toughest games I have ever played.”
Coach Travis Wright stated, “I feel that the season had gone well. It didn’t end the way we wanted it to but there were a lot of positives.” Coach Wright also stated that, “Some strengths I felt the team had were good senior leadership along with players gaining experience and building upon previous seasons.”
The end of the season was also followed by a lot of questioning about how good we will be and will we be able to maintain a winning record for next year’s football season.
This season we had a lot of seniors and a lot of freshmen. Due to the loss of many seniors it will require next year’s sophomores to step up along with a few freshmen.
Delph stated, “I think the team will be able to do a lot of good things and I expect that they will win conference to make it three years in a row.”
Manis noted, “There are some very athletic young men coming up and some young cats that will have to step up like they did last year, but I believe they’ll do great and it will be another season to remember.”
Coach Wright said, “Next year we will have to build upon our success from this season, and not just be satisfied with just being an OK team and want to become better.”
I think for us to accomplish a winning season next year’s players will have to work hard in the offseason to get bigger, and people will have to step up and play positions they have not played in before. I think next year the team will be able to obtain a winning record followed by this season of hard fought victories along with sad defeats.