Monday, November 30, 2009

Sort of, but not quite, on to basketball

By and large, the football in Forsyth County this year was pretty average, and that much is apparent now that we have no teams left in the playoffs. Mount Tabor was the last great hope, but the Spartans lost a tough game in a very tough place to play 9-7 at Asheville Reynolds last week. Mount Tabor should be tougher next year because most of their best players were juniors.
So who is left for us to cover? Not-so-surprisingly, the Mount Airy Granite Bears, and surprisingly, the Lexington Yellow Jackets. Lexington was 5-6 coming into the playoffs, but it has caught fire and will take an 8-6 record into Friday’s 2-A semifinal at Mountain Heritage.
Mount Airy will have to make a major gear shift this week. It took the Bears about a quarter last Friday to figure a way to slow down Princeton’s passing attack. But once they did, it was light’s out, on to the 1-A semifinals with a 51-20 win.
This week, the Bears won’t have to spend too much time preparing for the pass with Robbinsville coming to down. They will probably be in the weight room — they’ll need all the strength and stamina they can muster to stop Robbinsville brutish running attack.
But Mount Airy has won 30 straight games, and those that have seen the Bears play probably think like me — they will have some major things go wrong if they lose, like a rash of turnovers or injuries. I don’t see it happening for Coach Kelly Holder’s bunch.
And I will repeat that Luke Wheeler is one of the best players I have seen this season. If Wheeler, a 5-10, 175-pound linebacker and fullback, were a couple of inches bigger and 30 pounds heavier, college programs would be all over him. But the good thing for Mount Airy is Wheeler’s size works just fine for them.

I am slowly transitioning into basketball mode, and that transition won’t be complete until I cover the Frank Spencer Classic here after Christmas. But until then, we have schools all over our coverage area that will play in tournaments during Christmas break. So I am making a plea to basketball coaches and athletics directors – If you have a team playing in a tournament over the holidays and can fax or email a complete bracket to me, it would save me one of a lot of phone calls and requests.

Mason Linker (336-727-7324; or fax to 336-727-4083)
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