IN LIMBO — Madonna head coach John McCune, center, talks with assistant coaches during his team’s regular season finale against Oak Glen. McCune and the Blue Dons are waiting on litigation that has postponed the West Virginia playoffs to be settled to find out when and where they will get to play next. - Michael D. McElwain

WEIRTON — Who Madonna will play, and when they will play, is now in limbo.

“I’m a first-year head coach and it’s a pretty new staff, so this is our first time going through the playoff experience in general, yet alone like this,” Madonna head coach John McCune said.

To say it’s been a confusing few days for the Madonna football team and its coaching staff would be an understatement.

It all started with some real excitement.

Madonna officially clinched a playoff spot for the first time since 2020 with its first-year staff and an 18-man roster. Madonna overcoming the odds to get that playoff spot became official Friday night.

The final results across the state came in while the Blue Dons were on a scheduled bye and could only scoreboard watch. They hoped their win against Oak Glen the week prior was enough to get them in, which it was.

Unofficial rankings put Madonna at No. 14 Friday night.

Then the confusion began. By Sunday, due to changes in how the points were calculated stemming from court injunctions, that position changed to No. 16. It set up a trip to No. 1 Tug Valley scheduled for Saturday afternoon. The pairings were released Sunday folowing the SSAC playoff meetings.

Tuesday things changed again. The SSAC announced the playoffs have been postponed due to pending litigation.

“We’re trying to keep them focused. Even up through the announcement (Tuesday) we were still thinking and preparing like we’re going to play Tug Valley,” McCune said. “They’re the team we’ve been studying and focused on. We’re going against the No. 1 team in the state, and we’re really excited about that opportunity.

“We practiced (Tuesday) and are staying focused. These guys don’t want the ride to end. Even with the delay, the kids were already asking, ‘What are we doing next week? What’s the plan?’ I wish I had more to tell them, but right now there’s not much I can say. We just have to wait and see I guess.”

This is actually the second time Madonna found out on a Tuesday a game it had been preparing for was not happening. The third game of the season against Trinity Christian was canceled due to a lack of available players on the Warriors’ side. Trinity ended up forfeiting and did not play again the rest of the season.

“We’ve been down this road before, but that was early in the season when we knew there was still more football to play,” McCune said. “I think the scary thing is not knowing how long this litigation is going to last. We’re coming off a bye week, so we’ll be going into a third week between games. That’s a lot of downtime for anybody, yet alone high school kids. They play other sports, it’s getting cold outside, it’s a challenge to keep them focused for three weeks.

“It’s tough for our seniors because each game could be their last. We’re trying to make it memorable for them. We’re going to try to have some team bonding activities the rest of the week and going into next week.”

Though the possibility the playoffs could be postponed was something everyone kind of knew could happen, the Dons were in the process of getting ready for Tug Valley. A process they plan to continue until told otherwise.

“We’d like to have a chance to shock the state as a 16-seed going against the 1-seed,” McCune said. “The kids are excited about that opportunity. Of course, whether it’s Tug Valley, Tucker County, Wahama, whoever we end up playing, we’ll prepare the same way and give it our best shot to try and pull the upset.”

The tradeoff of another week to heal from the regular season and prepare a game plan is not worth the wait, according to the head coach whose team is now 7-3.

“It is another week to get healthy, but we’re as healthy as we can be with the 18 bodies we have, so we want to play,” McCune said. “For us, with 18 guys, our practices are different. It’s not like a team like Tug Valley that’s got 38 guys that can practice 11 on 11. For us, we’ve got to make the most of what we’ve got.

“We’re doing some different things in practice, probably more conditioning work to keep the kids in shape because we know we’re going to need them to play a lot of snaps against a bigger team.

“We can talk about more time to get healthy and prepare, but we are healthy and ready to play.”

The uncertainty is a lot to deal with, for sure. The focus for the Dons now is to just stay ready and hope they get their shot to shock everyone, regardless of what team they face.

“The attitude for us is to control what we can control and let it play out,” McCune said. “The question now is can a decision be made? I think it’s enough of the finger pointing between the state and some of the schools … it is what it is. For a team like us, we’re in single A where we need to be. We know we’re firmly in the playoffs, so we’re just going to let everyone else fight it out until a decision gets made and try to stay focused.

“It’s frustrating, you see it on social media around the state. People want the playoffs, it’s very important. This should be a fun time of the year for football and go figure, we’ve got another week of no football in the state of West Virginia, it’s unfortunate.”