Today’s interviewee is Irwin County coach Casey Soliday, whose team is ranked No. 3 in Class A Division II but also seeded No. 3 from its region, meaning a home playoff game is not likely on the path to a state championship. Irwin is 10-1, with its only loss against Clinch County. Irwin, Clinch and Brooks County finished in a three-way tie, broken by points differential in games among those teams, and then head-to-head. Irwin County beat eighth-ranked Greene County 42-7 in the first round and will play this week at Region 1 champion Early County.
1. How did you play in the first round? “I thought our defense played really well. That was the biggest key to the game. They had been moving the ball pretty well against some other people, and they have some good athletes and big linemen, and our defense maybe played their best game of the year to hold them. Our offense started off really well. We scored points quick, then got away from what we were doing, then got back to it and moved the ball to eat clock and finish it.” [Greene County was limited to 226 total yards and was 3-of-17 on third- and fourth-down conversions.]
2. Ranked No. 3 but likely won’t play a home game in the playoffs. How do you feel about your region’s tiebreaker and your playoff fate? “There are definitely other tiebreakers out there, but that was the one we agreed to, and that’s the one all teams were playing by. We may not like it right now, but if we’d handled our business, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Obviously you’d like a home game. It’s just more comfortable playing at home, and it’s a way to pay back your fans and the community for all they do. It’s always a big deal for them. We were a No. 1 seed two or three years ago and still had to go on the road twice because we lost coin tosses. It can go either way. You’ve got to play everybody if you’re trying to win it all. We just go as it comes and try to prepare for each game each week.”
3. Shane Marshall has rushed for more than 1,450 yards this season on an offense averaging more than 40 points per game. Is he the best running back that Irwin has had over the years? “He’s one of the better ones for sure, but everyone was a little different in how good they were. Take D.J. Lundy. He was more of a power back and could do things because of his size. [Lundy is now a linebacker at Florida State.] We also had Gabe Benyard, who was good because of how athletic he was, and he was also your best receiver. We could move him around and throw it up to him, and he would get it. [Benyard is a wide receiver at Kennesaw State.] Shane is more of a pure running back than the other two. It would be tough to say one was better than the other. All had their things. What makes Shane good is just his tenacity and want to. He has very good feet and vision, and then you mix that with being quick and having some explosion, and that makes for a really good running back. [Marshall is committed to Minnesota.]”
4. On the subject of issues, the GHSA’s board of trustees met Wednesday to discuss the proposed competitive-balance model for classifying teams. No decision is imminent. But how do you feel about this model, which would classify schools based on their overall sports success and not enrollment except as a starting point? “I’m not a fan of the competitive-balance thing. I think there’s a lot of [bad] things that can happen because of it. For example, I can think back when Clinch County had a year when they had a group of kids that won the state championship in football, basketball and baseball, so they might be in single-A this year, and those guys graduate, and the kids that follow them pay the price and have to be moved up. The other thing is, people just look at football, but if you have a soccer program that hasn’t won a game, and you move up [as a school], you’ve just increased their competition. Another scenario I’ve heard from a few coaches is that if they’ve got football players playing basketball and baseball that they [the coaches] need to do their best not to let them play in basketball and baseball so they won’t get moved up. I don’t think that’s an option we want to go down.”
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