SHIELDS: Don’t panic, Haywood fans

Any Haywood High football fans who might want to panic after the Tomcats took one on the chin this week in Murfreesboro, y’all can put a stop to that for now.

Liberty fans who’ve been following the Crusaders for more than six months can tell you that from experience.

We discussed in preseason how Steve Hookfin, Haywood’s first-year head coach and the former leader at Liberty, prefers to schedule non-region games as difficult as possible.

It only made things easier for Hookfin when he found out Oakland, a Class 6A team in Murfreesboro, needed another opponent after one of theirs from another state dropped them with a few weeks to go before the start of the season.

Less than a week later Hookfin made the official call to Oakland head coach Kevin Creasy to begin the discussion.

For anybody who might consider doubting Hookfin’s scheduling practices, let’s take a look at the recent past.

It was two years ago when Liberty lost to Hendry County, Brentwood Academy and Memphis University School over the course of four weeks. Things looked bleak for the Crusaders as they were 1-4 nearly halfway through the season.

Then something started to happen because they played competition that was nowhere near the level of the three teams they played against earlier in the season.

The Crusaders started winning, and it wasn’t even close.

That was what Hookfin is trying to do with playing Oakland, and it appears from a couple of his teams at Liberty.

In the next few weeks they dominated their competition with lopsided scores and running clocks.

Don’t be shocked if the Tomcats come out and repeat that trend, althought accomplishing that will be difficult with the remaining opponents Haywood has.

Big week next week

Week 9 promises to be another fun week of West Tennessee high school football.

We’ve got a couple of undefeated matchups with Dresden traveling to Union City and Huntingdon playing at Wayne County.

We nearly had three unbeaten matchups before South Gibson lost to Westview. Still, we have unbeaten Liberty hosting the Hornets with one loss.

Admittedly for me, the Hardin County-Chester County game lost some of its luster when both teams lost this past week, but that will still be another great game to keep up with as both teams will try to bounce back this week.

Brandon Shields is the high school sports columnist for The Jackson Sun. Contact him at 425-9751 or at bjshields@jacksonsun.com. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at jacksonsunsports.