Roof to face old team
A year after accepting the head coaching position at Weatherford, Reagan Roof will face his old team, the Bethany Bronchos, in the first round of the Class 4A football playoffs.
WEATHERFORD — Reagan Roof said he should have seen this coming.
As the first round of the playoffs begin Friday, Roof and his Weatherford football team will host Bethany.
Friday willmark 364 days since Roof coached his last game as the head man at Bethany. The Bronchos lost to Weatherford 35-0 in the first round of the playoffs, and four months later Roof was hired as the head coach at Weatherford.
Roof said he knew the two Class 4A teams would face each other eventually, but playing the only program he had ever coached in his first playoff game at Weatherford is kind of surreal.
“It adds a lot of emotional factors,” Roof said. “I knew it was coming one of these days. I just didn’t think it would be our first playoff game.”
Take away the coaching circumstances, and the matchup between the two schools could be one of the better games of the first round.
Both teams are 8-2, Bethany has a dominant run game led by senior running back Payton Harrell, while Weatherford has relied on a stingy defense that Roof credits for winning several close games this year.
Bethany coach Jon Arthur, who was an assistant under Roof, said the chance to take on his former boss and friend is an interesting one.
“You prepare like you would for anyone else,” Arthur said. “But you have friends and guys that you pull for week in and week out and that’s certainly the case with them. We just have to take the businesslike approach and focus on getting a win.”
Roof says he’s fallen in love with Weatherford and the atmosphere of a game day. He’s excited to see what a playoff game is like on the home side.
Still, the prospect of a door-die game versus his old school is not something he relishes.
“It’s bittersweet in a way,” Roof said. “It was really hard leaving Bethany, andto turn right around and play them, that’s tough.
“Nothing we can do now but go play.”