WINNING THE DAY
Marion County can now focus on Class 2A championship game
There is no change in the football schedule in Jasper this week.
Marion County’s Warriors, as they have all year, will lift weights each morning. They’ll go to school, then to football, each player knowing the day’s routine as if he’d scripted the practice.
Their mantra remains the same: “Win the day.”
“We’re going to do what we do, and we enter each day wanting to get better at it,” said Marion coach Ricky Ross, the architect responsible for the Warriors’ 25-3 stretch over the past two seasons. “Our bottom line is to take care of every day — to focus on that day. If you’re as good as you can be today, good things will happen.
“To be the best you can be could mean something beyond self — putting yourself aside, sacrificing for a teammate, even going somewhere you might not want to go before a teammate has to.”
Marion County (13-1) will play Memphis Trezevant (11-3) at noon EST Saturday in Cookeville for Tennessee’s Class 2A championship.
Marion is one of two Chattanooga-area teams remaining in the high school postseason. Calhoun will be in a Georgia Class AAA semifinal Friday night at 7:30 against Blessed Trinity in Roswell.
After being extended to three overtimes this past Friday before dispensing with Elbert County, the top-ranked Yellow Jackets (13-0) came out on the short end of a Saturday morning coin flip, necessitating the road trip.
Christian Heritage in Georgia Class A private, Trion in Georgia Class A public, Notre Dame in Tennessee Class 3A and Rhea County in Tennessee Class 5A were eliminated from championship chases Friday. Christian Heritage lost 28-27 to Aquinas, Trion was shut out 21-0 by Irwin County, Notre Dame was overwhelmed 42-2 by Alcoa and Rhea County was outlasted 42-28 by Sevier County.
In Jasper, there is no mention of unfinished business or having left the field at Tennessee Tech a year ago as the state’s second-best 2A team.
“I don’t want to talk about this being the last time, the last play or the last time some of them will put on a helmet,” Ross said. “I know them to know that they’ve worked harder than anybody else, that it’s time to go out there and take what’s rightfully theirs.”
He has avoided talking about the last opportunity but has focused on the things that got the Warriors to this point.
“When we talked about the playoffs, we said there are five steps in the process and don’t ever look ahead. We’ve done four steps, and now all we care about is step five,” Ross said. “We want to concentrate on variables we can control: maximum effort, great pad level, being a great teammate, running to the football.”
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.