Dawgs finish gridiron season in playoffs

Friday night’s final game of the football season for Clinton County’s Bulldogs didn’t have the ending everyone had hoped for, but congratulations are still in order for our Dawgs, as well as to Coach Rocky Tallent and his entire staff.

Despite going down in defeat to a well-rounded Edmonson County team, the Bulldogs did endure a terrible set of surroundings in this COVID-19 stricken year that saw the program shut down at one point before finishing a shorted season with a 2-3 overall record.

Congrats Dawgs on a good year, and heads up, things will be better – and hopefully more normal – when the 2021 campaign rolls around.

Winter sports – where do we even begin

Last week we looked at how the CCHS gymnasium would be set-up when we would finally get the 2020-2021 basketball season underway.

Then the bomb that is a combination of COVID-19, the KHSAA and the Governor’s office came together to shut those plans down, at least for what would have been the 2020 portion of this winter sports season.

So, what’s next?

For the players and coaches, it’s a couple of weeks of being out of the gym, as mandated by the Governor’s Executive Order, then back in for a couple of weeks (hopefully) of practice and conditioning, a brief break for Christmas at home with family, a few more days of practice, a New Years break (maybe), then a couple more days of practice in preparation for what is slated as a Tuesday, January 5, start over in Burkesville against our Panther counterparts.

Then, COVID-19 allowing, we’re off to the races for the next eight weeks of what will be a shortened basketball season.

There’s going to be a lot different about this asterisk ladened 2020*-2021 basketball season, in addition to the time frame, the number of fans and seating arrangements in the gym, the lack of normal practice days, a lack of center-court meetings and then coin flips replacing the traditional game-starting center-court jump-ball.

No holiday tournaments all across the state, including the two that have become a couple of the most popular events for teams to come to right here in Clinton County.

With all of that said, the KHSAA made the decision last week to make the time-frame changes, and it wasn’t an easy decision for them to process.

There were other options, none of which were any more attractive that what we have now.

They could have pushed everything back even more, played games in March and April and hoped for a “May Madness” post-season run.

Also, and the one that no one wanted – they could have just thrown in the towel for this season and said “see you next year”.

If the COVID-19 numbers don’t come down, and especially if they continue to accelerate or even go through yet another post-Thanksgiving spike in mid to late December, that’s the alternative we could be facing. . . it’s a real possibility, although no one wants to say it out loud.

The vaccine is coming, but it can’t get here in time to have any effect on this basketball season that our seniors have worked their entire careers to get to.

Let’s do everything we can to help get them there.

Last year’s regional tournaments were a long time ago and I’d certainly like to cover our Lady Bulldogs and Dawgs in some post-season games this March.

It’s going to be a long December, but hopefully January and 2021 will get here seeing us in a better place than we are now – COVID-19 wise.

In the meantime – mask up,

so our seniors can get a season in!