Just a thought on WRH....(meant to say this last night but the NASCAR comment got me distracted).....They are one of many programs that I've highly respected for decades.....I've seen them in person one time; those who've followed my posts for the last 19 years might associate me with South Granville, where I've worked and been the stat guy for football & baseball and playoff projection bracketologist and playoff twitter reporter for every sport, but the really old school posters that have been on the board for a while might remember that I was originally from Gates County and they were the primary team I followed all through college and grad school, and my junior year of college, the Barons had a regional final playoff game a WRH....I made the 2 hour drive from Chapel Hill hoping for the best, but those Dogs were in another league compared to everybody else we (Gates Co. HS) had played that year; the conference was tough with Williamston, Roanoke, Plymouth, Perquimans, Southside, Northside; we won some and lost some, and we had non-conference wins over Hertford Co., Northampton-East, Currituck, and Pasquotank, and lost a tough one to Manteo, but breezed through the first three rounds of the playoffs against Pamlico, Louisburg, and North Brunswick, with two different RBs with 2000 yards in the Wing T but a passing game that for the season probably threw more INTs than complete passes....everybody knew it was going to be a run to the right or the left or up the middle; everybody (in the playoffs) played Cover 1 or Cover 0 the whole game but still couldn't stop it.....until WRH that is....the Dogs had the ball first and went right down the field and scored, Barons returned the ensuing kickoff for a TD and briefly led 8-7 after a 2 point conversion, then WRH went right back down the field and there wasn't much stopping them the rest of the game....Baron rushing attack that had been so potent through the regular season and playoffs (averaging well over 400 yards a game) was held to something like 150-170 yards, most of that on the one scoring drive in either the 2nd or 3rd qtr, to cut the lead to something like 28-16, and the other scoring drive in garbage time late in 4th qtr when it was already over, to make the final score 42-24 instead of 42-16, I remember talking to the Baron coaches later speaking very complimentary of the WRH program and how they wanted to get all of our returning football guys taking weight lifting class in the spring instead of mixing and matching with some spring, some fall....and by the way I'm sure that long-time WRH folks probably remember the state finals the week after beating Gates Co. and some guy named TA McLendon had a day in the state finals about like Northern Guilford's TJ Logan did against Charlotte Catholic in 2013, and there might have been some haters on message boards ragging on WRH for being overrated pretenders, but I've always chalked that up to just how good TA was...I saw with my own eyes, 7 days earlier, what the WRH defense could do against a power running game, and have always highly respected them, along with East Duplin, Clinton, and James Kenan....I knew people at UNC who played at ED & Clinton (including 2 football guys, one of whom eventually played in the NFL) and respect all those programs....as a Tar Heel, one of my favorite RBs from recent memory is a WRH Dog, and now a Denver Bronco
About Albemarle though: what a difference the threat of passing game makes though?? When WRH stacked he box against Gates, 80-90% of the time they prevented the big play since they didn't even worry about the pass.....If you stacked the box against Albemarle, they could throw it and make you pay; I saw them twice the next year (with same QB), when they beat Thomasville to win their conference, and then in the state finals against Williamston where they won a close game; they definitely wanted to run it, but they could throw it seemingly whenever they needed to or wanted to
