Huskies have high hopes for playoff run

This season has the potential to be a banner one for the Hewitt-Trussville High School football team. 

The Huskies started the season with eight straight wins for the first time since 1987, when Hewitt-Trussville began the season 9-0 before dropping its final regular season contest and first-round playoff game.

“It’s been real exciting,” head coach Josh Floyd said. “That’s what we’ve wanted to [do], is try to take this program to the next level, and we’ve got a lot of people excited in this community. It brings the community together a little bit more. We’re excited where we’re at.”

However, Floyd wants to ensure the 2016 edition of the Huskies does not end the season the same way the 1987 team did. He believes he has the pieces to do that.

“We’re a veteran group,” he said. “We’ve got a good senior class that’s played in a lot of big football games the last few years. We got to start with that. We feel like we have been getting better most weeks and trying to improve.”

The Huskies stormed through Class 7A, Region 4 this year, composed of teams from the northern portion of the state. They have done it with one of the most explosive offenses in the state, punctuated by point totals of 78, 62, 59 and 55 in regular season contests.

A few of those games turned into offensive shootouts for both teams, but the defense has certainly been a strength for the Huskies in most games, according to Floyd.

“We’ve been pleased with our defense,” he said. “They’ve played well this year and gotten a few turnovers and gotten some fourth down stops, which are like turnovers. Like anything, we’ve got to get better.”

This season marks Floyd’s third at Hewitt-Trussville, and the third consecutive that he has guided the Huskies to the state playoffs. One thing he has yet to do is win one of those playoff games. He certainly has experience doing so, after four state championships at his previous stop, Shiloh Christian School in Arkansas, and knows what it takes to win postseason games.

“Sometimes you back off the guys in practice a little bit as far as the physical side goes,” he said. “It’s a physical game, and so we just try to be smart. Obviously, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, but we just try to be wise on the physicality side.”

According to the Alabama High School Football Historical Society, this will be Hewitt-Trussville’s 27th appearance in the playoffs. The Huskies have never won a state title and have been to the championship game once — in 1992 — but Floyd said the only way to achieve that goal is to “go one game at a time.”

“Every coach is going to say that, but it’s just true,” he said. “Once playoff brackets come out, the fans can talk about stuff, but as a team all you can worry about is one game at a time. It’s do-or-die every week.”