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HAMLIN -- After a long summer of work, the Brooke Bruins have a long trip to start their season.
Brooke will get on charter busses and make a four-hour trip to take on Lincoln County on Friday night.
"It's very exciting to finally get to game week," Brooke head coach Frank Sisinni said. "The kids are anxious, the fans are anxious, the parents are anxious, and the coaches are anxious to finally get out there and play four quarters of football. There's a lot of work that goes into the off season. There's a lot of work that goes into the summer, but to have a couple scrimmages and now moving to game days, we're extremely excited.
"We're going to find out how well we travel. We did a real good job traveling last year to Elkins and this time around it's odd because it's the first one, but it's a situation for us to be able to go out and play in the state of West Virginia in Week 1 and to be able to go and see where we are at with some of the competition around the state.
"Going down to Lincoln High School will be a challenge due to the length of the travel and the opponent"
The Bruins won last year's meeting at Brooke Memorial Stadium, 35-0. It was the first home victory for Sisinni in is his first year leading his alma mater.
The Bruins finished 4-6 last season and ended the season with a big win over Weir High, creating some momentum going into the offseason. A win on opening night would go a long way in making sure that momentum carries over.
"You always want to get that win the first one," Sisinni said. "Getting a win in the first is one would be really big for us to set the tone for the season and for the kids to really build off of what happened to end last year and into the summer, into our camp and our scrimmages. It's really a situation where it's the next step, it's the next thing in front of us, and we're excited to go out and play."
Lincoln County went 1-9 each of the last two seasons. The Bruins also won the last meeting down in Hamlin two years ago.
Brooke has shown progress through the offseason and into its scrimmages, ending with a strong showing in a match up with Wheeling Park.
"Our summer was really good," Sisinni said. "We had scrimmages with Oak Glen, who's coming off a playoff appearance, Cameron, then last Thursday we had a scrimmage against Wheeling Park, and that's a true test there because when you start playing a 4A football team in West Virginia, to see that kind of speed and talent, that's a big deal for us to have that scrimmage and see where we're at.
"We had a good scrimmage at home and we got out of it healthy and we're just kind of anxious to get out there and go into regular season now."