Fort Gay, W. Va. — After a season shortened by COVID the Tolsia football team is anxious to play even though the Rebels lack experience they will make up for it by playing hard.
2021 Tolsia Football Roster
Seniors: #3 Zach Ramey, #5 Eli Blackburn, #7 Harley Muncy, #73 Quistis Stanley
Juniors: #8 Darryl Riggs, #21 David Dingess, #24 Jayson Vanhoose, #44 Brian Ekers, #52 Shane Hunt, #55 Derek Brewer, #62 Kaleb Walker, #64 Aaron Rodgers, #80 Tanner Ferguson
Sophomores: #1 Julian Vance, #10 Cameron Ratliff, #12 Gabe Vance,
#23 Cole Jordan, #25 Wesley Slone, #30 Jacob Litton, #60 Elvis Clark, #69 Drew Prince, #71 Bryant Horn, #74 Matt Kelley, #77 Levi Parsley,
Freshmen: #4 Luke Williamson, #13 Zach Ratliff, #39 Braydon Mollette, #59 Braxton McCoy, #72 Mason Brewer, #81 Xavier Hitchcock
Head Coach Eric Crum
Assistant Coaches Wade Cyrus, David Thompson, Ernie Richardson, Jason Litton, Nick Crum
The Rebels went 4-2 last season and made the playoffs as the #10 seed but never got to play a postseason game because of COVID restrictions either on their end or the other team’s end.
The Rebels only have two starters from last season back and that’s two lineman Junior Kaleb Walker and Sophomore Levi Parsley who will have to step up to a leadership role.
Sophomore Cameron Ratliff will be the Quarterback, Sophomore Jacob Litton, Freshman Bray Mollette, Seniors Zach Ramey and Eli Blackburn will also be touching the football for the Rebels.
On defense Parsley and Walker will be counted on heavily up front to provide for a defense that will break in 11 new starters.
2021 Schedule
August 27th at Wayne 7:00
September 3rd at Midland Trail
September 10th Fairland
September 24th at Wahama
October 1st at Tug Valley
October 8th at Mingo Central
October 15th Buffalo
October 22nd Mount View
October 29th Phelps, Ky
November 5th at Hannan
Tolsia Head Coach Eric Crum
COACH’S COMMENTS
“…Well, we’re definitely young, and very inexperienced. We got a long way to go before we can really consider ourselves to be where we want to be. The one thing I can say about this bunch is that they play hard. You know you can’t coach effort so the mistakes and the misalignments and the not knowing where to go and what to do we can fix that. As long as they got the effort we can live with everything else and so far the effort has been great.”
“… We are seeing a lot of improvement since the Van scrimmage a couple weeks ago. We only dressed about 17 kids against them. We had a couple of kids hurt and we had five starters out because they went on vacation for a week at the beginning of practice and they didn’t have enough practices in to play in the scrimmage. So that’s something we addressed and in the future it won’t happen again. They got two months to do all of that. You know they need to commit a little bit to0, It ain’t middle school anymore. We are very young and middle school starts a week later than us so maybe that was a factor. We have definitely improved, we improved from the Pocahontas Co. first quarter to the next quarter in our scrimmage with them last Friday. We also improved against Shady Spring in the two quarters that we played them as well. You could see it from that little short time from Friday to Friday and like I said the young kids once they got rolling little bit they gained a lot of confidence and that’s going to be the big key for us is not getting down, getting flustered. We need to play with confidence and we will play better.”
“… Yeah, we got zero returning starters on defense, We lost a couple to transfer and dropping out of school. You know, I think COVID messed everybody’s lives up as a whole. We do have Levi Parsley and Kaleb Walker on the line but Levi was a freshman and Kaleb a sophomore and they had a lot of guys around them, seniors that kind of helped them out. They kind of made sure they were always in the right spot.
Now those guys are the leaders and that’s a big learning curve. I’m sure glad to have those guys back though. We are just going to do the best we can and play hard and try to learn and get better every week.”
“… Last year was a short season and I really thought we had a shot at doing something special but COVID got us and that was disappointing for sure. You know we have great kids and thought they got the short end of the stick last season.”
“… This team is a continuous progression for us day to day, week to week and they’re young.
So you’ll have a good practice day and you’ll have a bad practice. So it’s not consistent with them yet. I try to explain to them don’t let one bad day at practice set you back three days, it’s a work in progress, but they play so hard and that’s refreshing. You don’t have to cheer them on. you don’t have to try to earn it out of them. They will go hard. Just getting them to go the right is a challenge right now.”
“… Big, big game for us Friday night at Wayne. I know they got some kids that transferred in, that’s some senior kids that’s going to help them and give them some experience. You can pretty much throw experience and records out the window when it comes to this ball game, it’s going to be a good hard fought game and we can’t wait to see how it will play out.”
“… I hope we’ll get some good crowds this season last year was a tough season all the way around it was miserable. The kids come out and play and then nobody can come and watch them or they were trying to watch on the internet. So it took away the special thing about Friday night football. There’s nothing like Friday night football or nothing like that. Hometown high school crowd cheering you on is a great feeling and this Friday should be a great atmosphere.”
