Centennial visits Ravenwood for Thursday night district game

By CAROL STUART
Brentwood Home Page
Ravenwood’s past and future will be on opposite sides of the football field Thursday night when Centennial’s new head coach Brian Rector comes back for his first game since leaving the school where he won a state championship in 2005.

But Rector, who spent the previous two seasons as a Western Kentucky University assistant, and Ravenwood’s new coach Joe Rietveld are playing down the coaching matchup.

Centennial Coach Brian Rector, shown coaching against Brentwood, helped lead Ravenwood to its state title in 2005 and a runner-up finish in 2006. (Photo by Timothy Duncan)

“It'll just be like any other game at this point in time,” Rector said. “. . . We're both two struggling teams trying to do everything we can to scratch out a win. And that's really it. So I'm doing the best I can to avoid being part of the storyline in that manner.”

Rector, 37, was the Raptors’ coach for the first seven seasons (2002-08, 43-22 overall record) and led RHS to the state title in only Ravenwood’s third year playing varsity football and fourth year as a school. He also took the Raptors to back-to-back finals with a runner-up finish in ’06.

“I think it'll be more hype with people outside the white lines than people inside the white lines,” said Rietveld, who was hired from Indiana only in April. “He's an excellent coach and he knows that he has to execute on the field, and I'm sure that’s what he's preaching to his kids.

“Coach (Rector) did a great job at Ravenwood, and he's part of the history of the football program. And I preach to the kids that he's part of it, he did some great things there, and he just chose to go a different direction. And we wish him well all the games – except for this one.”

To the collegiate level and back to Williamson County

Rector, a high school assistant in his home state Kentucky before taking the Ravenwood job, returned to the high school ranks after getting some experience at the collegiate level at WKU.

Coach Rector

“You just learn a lot of football whenever you go and do it as a career,” the Centennial coach said. “You see it from different angles. . . . I was able to learn quite a bit of situational football. That's been good, but none of it matters until you can really build your program and get the numbers up, because college is so much the numbers game. There are so many people on both sides of the ball.

“High school's totally different so it's very hard to actually mirror your program after a college unless you have gigantic numbers.”

Interestingly enough, Centennial and Hillsboro are classified into the smaller 5A division for the postseason under the current TSSAA playoff system, although they play in District 11-AAA during the regular season with four other 6A-size schools.

“It's obviously easier if you're in a 5A conference – however, I really wouldn't want it any other way,” Rector said. “I wouldn't want to be sitting here in Williamson County and not playing the other 6A schools. That would be ridiculous.”

Centennial’s enrollment should be boosted by the next TSSAA reclassification from this year’s WCS rezoning, which affected the Ravenwood zone and added some freshmen to the Cougars program from the RHS zone.

“Of course over the years that will continue to happen from the area, so we now have three middle schools that feed into us between Woodland, Page and Freedom,” Rector said. “We're a very eclectic group of people, and I think that's a good thing.”

Asked what attracted him to Centennial and another Williamson County, Rector listed three things that were instrumental: “The area is fantastic, the challenge of bringing a program that has traditionally struggled a little bit to some success, and then of course the principal, Dr. Frank Brown. He's just fantastic, he supports it, he's understands it, and he's the reason I'm here.”

Two teams looking to make move upward

Both teams come into Thursday’s 7:30 p.m. district game (moved due to Williamson County’s fall break Monday-Tuesday) needing the victory.

Centennial is 3-4 overall this season and last week shut out Cane Ridge – an opponent Ravenwood also defeated this season – but the Cougars are 0-3 in District 11-AAA. The district losses are to Franklin 21-7, Independence 24-22 and Brentwood 27-7.

The Raptors, 2-5 overall, defeated Hillsboro in its district opener but have lost four straight including a 49-0 pounding by Oakland last Friday.

“They've played a very tough schedule, very tough schedule, so they definitely are on the short end of that one right now,” Rector said. “And we're not as good as some of the other teams that they have played or getting ready to play. So we've got to do the best we can to make this a game and to get a win.”

The Raptors have played well on defense at times. (Photo by Jodi Rall)

The Raptors not only lost big to Murfreesboro Oakland (6-2), a frontrunner out of Rutherford County’s rugged District 7-AAA, but also had starting junior quarterback Andrew Radford knocked out with a shoulder injury. Senior Harrison Johnson and John Overton will be the two QBs this week for Ravenwood, which hasn’t got its ground game going lately behind its mammoth offensive line.

“Last Friday was definitely a tough pill to swallow,” Rietveld said. “They're a good football team so give them credit. We played a good football team and we didn't play to our ability, and that's a bad combination. I think we still have faith in our team, and we drew a line in the sand so to speak at halftime, and I think our kids responded.”

Rector said the Raptors have an edge on size, experience and numbers.

“They don't play a ton of kids both ways,” the Cougars coach said. “And they're just gigantic up front. Obviously they'll do whatever they can to use that to their advantage.”

Rietveld said Centennial’s defense is extremely fast and athletic, and offer lots of different looks with blitzes.

“Everybody they've played had yards lost on tackles,” the RHS coach said. “And we have to understand that if that does happen, it's not the end of the world and we have to get up and play the next play because we can get a hat on a hat and we can pop one for 20.”

On offense, the Cougars have speed on the perimeter and the Raptor defense, which has a physical D-line, needs to keep CHS from getting on the edge and to limit big pass plays, Rietveld said. “And special teams-wise we just can't make a mistake,” the RHS coach said. “We played Oakland, again which is a top tier team in the state, and we fumbled a punt.”

Ravenwood was driving the ball, down 21-0, and could have punched it in and cut it to 14 going into halftime and getting the ball to start the third quarter.

“We're not where we need to be, we're not fooling anybody and we're not trying to pull the wool over our players' eyes,” Rietveld said. “But at the same time there are some positives and we're trying to highlight those and correct all the negatives.”

Rector not ready to talk about RHS years just yet

The Ravenwood offense has struggled but did move the ball at times against Oakland’s very physical defense, and Rietveld said the team would have one player break down and needs “11 guys all the time.”

Rietveld said the Raptors seemed to have responded in the short week with a Thursday game, plus an off-schedule due to Tuesday’s day off for parent-teacher conference. “It seems like every week there's one thing after another, but we just keep grinding through and try to get the team to do the best job that we can,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rector, whose Ravenwood team in 2008 became the first Williamson County public school to ever defeat Brentwood Academy, said he is looking for consistency from his team. He likened his spot at Centennial to Rietveld’s job at RHS.

Coach Joe Rietveld won't have Andrew Radford available this week and maybe longer. (Photo by Jodi Rall)

“He seems like a very nice guy, very nice gentleman,” Rector said about Rietveld. “He and I are in a similar situation, again, where we're both just trying to scratch out a win for our teams. Hopefully we can show some good football and it not be a situation where ‘who messes up the least’ wins kind of thing.”

Rietveld called Rector “an excellent coach, no question about it.” And he expects Centennial to be well prepared, fundamentally sound, and to play with enthusiasm and passion. The Cougars staff also has Tom Shuman, Rector's replacement at Ravenwood the past two seasons, and some other former RHS coaches.

“There's a little bit of I guess, excitement with Coach Rector coming back, but more importantly I think it's two teams that are pretty hungry for a win and two teams that are pretty close in proximity,” the Raptors coach said.

Given one more chance to talk about his time at Ravenwood and what the 2005 championship run meant to the school and to him, Rector responded, with laughter: “I'm sorry, I'm going to pass on that. Those are interviews from several years ago and then several years from now -- when I'm somewhere else.”