Michael D. McElwain ONE MORE GAME — Cayden Braswell is one of Weir High’s seniors who will look to close their Weir High careers strong when the Red Riders visiti Herbert Hoover in the season finale tonight.

ELKVIEW — It seems like not all that long ago that teams were getting ready for the season to start. Tonight, Weir High is taking the field one more time to end its season with a trip to Herbert Hoover.

For first-year coach Quincy Wilson, it has been a debut season that has flown by, but that’s what he’s come to expect having spent most of his life around the sport.

“I feel like that’s how it always goes in football,” Wilson said of the season going by fast. “You go into summer and feel like you have all summer and next thing you know camp is here, then before too long you jump right into the season.

“It’s been a year full of a lot of learning lessons. Our theme this week is this is our last ride, so let’s try to enjoy it and finish strong.”

That hope to finish strong will come against another very good football team, as the Huskies are 7-2 and ranked No. 6 in Class AAA, on their way to a playoff appearance and likely a home game in the first round.

“We don’t shy away from anyone,” Wilson said. “It looks like, if it pans out the way it looks like it will, we’ll end up having played six playoff teams and two more teams around .500 that didn’t miss them by much. It was a tough schedule and there were a lot of lessons to learn, but we’ll be battle tested and better for it in the long run.”

The Red Riders are 0-9, and looking to both avoid a winless season and to send their seniors off with win.

“It’s the last chance to get these seniors one,” Wilson said. “You want to win every game obviously, but we want to win the last one for seniors because these are great kids first of all. For a lot of these guys, this is going to be their last football game. A lot of them are going to school or the trades or work, we have a couple guys that are going to try to play in college, but this is it for them here and we’re telling them embrace these practices, take in these meetings, because we only have a couple days left together.”

He knows getting that elusive victory will not come easy against the Huskies.

“They have athletes all over the board,” Wilson said of Hoover. “They have a sophomore quarterback (Peyton Grigsby) that is probably one of the best players in the state, he’s a true dual-threat. They have some good receivers around him and they have a good defense that plays very hard.

“It’s a great atmosphere down there, I’ve got to see a game down there before. I told our kids to embrace that. We feel like we have a good plan, we’re gonna try to go execute it for four quarters.”

While they’ve had very different seasons, it’s two programs with a lot of tradition coming together.

“It’s two programs with a lot of tradition,” Wilson said. “I’ve heard a lot about them going back to when I was in high school. They have a lot of tradition, I know Joey (Fields, Hoover head coach) well going back to his Mingo Central days and I look forward to going down there and competing with them.”