WCHS scrimmage with Rhea Co. canceled

By ROB NUNLEY / Sports Editor for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.)

Warren County’s running backs wait for the beginning of a drill during a recent practice. The Pioneers have been waiting all week to scrimmage Rhea County today, only to find their opponents won’t be coming. (Rob Nunley photo)

It was scheduled to be the Pioneers’ final chance at a live scrimmage before moving full-bore into their regular season.

It was also supposed to be a celebration of sorts, as the Pioneers and their guests could mark the end of summer drills with a friendly post-scrimmage get-together.

But the rug was pulled out from under the entire event, as tonight’s scheduled scrimmage against Rhea County has been scrapped.

Coach Gerald Tidwell found out on Wednesday there would be no scrimmage tonight, when after a week of attempting to reach officials within the Golden Eagles’ football program, he finally was able to contact coach Jason Fitzgerald by phone.

“I’ve been trying to call for a week, trying the school and different places, and nobody answered,” Tidwell said. “Finally Wednesday I was with (athletic director Andy) Jacobs, and I got hold of their coach.

“He said they had forgotten about our scrimmage, and were going to be playing in a jamboree (tonight.)”

Tidwell noted the latest miscommunication continues the trend regarding working with the Golden Eagles throughout the off-season.

“We scrimmaged them there in the spring, and they gave me the idea of feeding players after the scrimmage,” Tidwell recalled. “They told us not to worry about making plans for a meal, they’d have food for both teams.

“I thought it was a good idea, and we even took that idea and fed Wilson Central when they came here for a spring scrimmage. But then we go over to Rhea County, and all of a sudden after the scrimmage there was no meal.”

The second-year Pioneer head coach said scrimmaging here during fall drills was originally the Golden Eagles’ idea.

“They brought that up, ‘you guys come here in the spring, we’ll come there in the fall,'” he noted. “The booster club was ready to feed them, and as a team we were looking forward to performing a lot better against them this time than we did in the spring. But now we won’t have that chance.”

While he and his staff had planned to use tonight’s scrimmage as one last measuring stick to check the Pioneers’ progress heading into the season, Tidwell said his team now has to adjust its strategy.

“We had planned things back early in the spring, so we’d have some quality competition this fall to get us ready,” he said. “We didn’t do that well at our first scrimmage at Portland, so we were hoping to be able to use (tonight) to see how much we’d improved. Now that idea has been shot down.

“We’ve practiced hard at camp and the last several days, so now we’re going to back off a bit (today) and take the time for a fun team activity.”

The Pioneers’ 2003 season begins one week from tonight, with a home matchup against Livingston Academy.