Indian Valley athletic director Zach Golec and the folks
around the school’s football program knew it wasn’t good news when they heard
the news that Expression Prep Academy from Huntington, West Virgina couldn’t even
finish the first half of its game at Garaway on the second Friday of the
football season. The Lions, Golec said, didn’t have enough healthy bodies.
With the Lions already scheduled to have Week 3 off, those
associated with the Braves program held out hope that Expression Prep would
heal up in time for its trip to Indian Valley this Friday. That didn’t happen,
though, and now the Braves are left with a nine-game regular season, which
could have ramifications down the line.
“We knew when they didn’t finish their game with Garaway
that things didn’t look good,” Golec said.
The team found out officially on Monday that there would be
no game this Friday. That leaves Indian Valley without a fifth regular-season
home game, though the Braves still could host two postseason contest and
possibly three, depending on where they wind up in the Div. IV, Region 15
standings.
Indian Valley currently sits fourth in the region. The top
12 make the playoffs and the top four get a first-round bye.
Even running the table for the second consecutive year, the
Braves may miss out on the first-round bye, which was instituted this year when
the Ohio High School Athletic Association cut down the number of teams making
the postseason by 25 percent.
Harbin points – which are garnered by winning games, with
more accrued by beating teams with better won-loss records – will be difficult
for Indian Valley to collect from Expression Prep, which is already 0-2, won’t
play the Braves and may not win another game anyway.
Couple that with the fact that four teams on Indian Valley’s
schedule as of now have no victories and the odds of the Braves getting enough
points to land in the top four in the region are lengthened. On the plus side,
though, having to play in the first round of the postseason would get them
their 10th game back and get them their fifth home game back. There are also big Inter-Valley Conference games looming with unbeatens Ridgewood and Garaway.
The first three rounds of the postseason this year will be
held at the schools of the higher-seeded teams, so depending what happened the
first two rounds, Indian Valley conceivable could host three games.
If they do get the bye, as Golec mused, they can prepare for
it this week, when they figure out what to do while everyone else has a game.
Meanwhile, Golec and the football program have to think
ahead about how to deal with potential future gaps in their schedule. They
played Roosevelt High from Washington D.C. in Week 3. Golec said they were a
solid opponent.
Ideally, though, Indian Valley would rather play Ohio teams.
And that’s not easy for a team that competes in Division IV in a geographic
area comprised mostly of much larger or much smaller teams.
“It’s a lot of different factors,” Golec said of how the
Braves wound up with two out-of-state foes this year. “We did have a tough time
getting some people to agree to play. There are some instances where, for
example, people don’t want six away games, and neither do we.”
Much of the reason the Braves may face problems finding
non-league opponents is, well, they’re good. When you win a state title, as
Indian Valley did last season, and return most of that team, people don’t want
to play you.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Golec said.
Golec will have a challenging offseason looking to find
opponents again. Green and Steubenville, on the schedule this year in the first
two weeks, will be back on it next year. New Philadelphia, which played the
Braves in the past, will return to their schedule in 2026.
What happens after that point on the schedule next season
remains to be seen.
“We can’t just play Massillon and McKinley every week,”
Golec said with a laugh. “We’ve got to think of our kids too.”
