Sports
PREVIEW: Tri-Valley Gunning for Yet Another MVL Title
< < Back toEditor's Note: Over the next two weeks our reporters will be bringing you team previews for each team in the SEOAL, TVC-Ohio, TVC-Hocking, and our West Virginia teams. We continue in the MVL, where physical football is the name of the game.
The Tri-Valley Scotties were one possession away from making school history during the 2013 Regional semi-final in the Division III playoffs. After an exhilarating four quarters of football, the game was decided in overtime where the Athens Bulldogs prevailed 55-52, ending the Scotties season with a 9-3 record.
Even with the Scotties string of success in the MVL in recent years, coach Justin Buttermore was surprised with how the season turned out, after feeling his team had many question marks before that 2013 season.
“We had a lot of young guys who were unproven and we didn’t know what we were going to get out of them,” Buttermore said. “If you would have asked me week four or five, I would’ve said, ‘We aren’t even going to make the playoffs,’ because we were not a very good football team and we made a lot of mistakes on and off the field.”
Buttermore said that his 2014 Scotties have been working day-in and day-out as they work towards their goal of winning a fourth-consecutive MVL title.
“This has been probably the best weight room group we’ve ever had,” Buttermore said. “It is probably the deepest team we’ve ever had. We’ve got 24-25 seniors, 24-25 juniors, so I feel like there is a lot of depth in this group.”
A few of those seniors that helped Tri-Valley reach the regional semi-finals last year are receiver Hunter Mohler, running backs Daniel “Bubby” Scott and Logan Bash, and quarterback Brock Fargus.
All four will be returning for their senior seasons and are excited to show off their hard work during the offseason.
“It’s good to have all of us back,” Scott said. “ It’s almost like we have two senior years. We came in last year and we were all leading a team and now this year, we are going to come back and improve on what we had from last year.”
The Scotties will get a chance to see if their hard work has paid off week one at Licking Valley, who handed Tri-Valley one of their two regular season losses last season.
'Gridiron Glory' returns on Friday, Aug. 22 at 11:30 p.m. on WOUB. You can follow the show on Twitter @gridironglory, like the Gridiron Glory page on Facebook, and follow along on Instagram @woubsports. You can also join the conversation throughout the season by using the hashtag #GridGlory.