Andrews We all hated youth football practice.”
That’s not something you’d expect to hear from Andrews senior Taylor Waldroup, who is part of the Wildcats’ history-making Class of 2022. The group has won at every level since Pee Wee football, and this year led Andrews to its first Smoky Mountain Conference championship since 1983.
But ask Waldroup what it’s like to take the field on Friday nights, and the emotions flip completely.
“That’s something you can’t explain,” he said.
His fellow classmates had similar reactions.
“There’s nothing like Friday night lights,” said Andy Tatham. For Donovan Bateman, “Once you run through that banner, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
The Wildcats’ senior class is not the most talkative bunch. But get them to open up even a little bit, and the chemistry that comes from playing and spending hours upon hours with each other for over a decade is evident.
It’s the same way on Friday nights. Andrews is confident in its preparation, which shows on the field. There’s not really trash talking or excessive celebration after touchdowns. It’s hand the ball to the referee, celebrate with teammates for a few seconds, before moving on to the extra point, the ensuing kickoff and getting the ball back to score again.
As one of the smallest schools in North Carolina playing football, most of the Wildcats’ starters go both ways. They can’t afford to get too high or too low.
That’s what the fans are for, and they’ve been on the magic carpet ride with this team all season. They know it has been decades since Andrews had a team this good.
The players know it too, but you wouldn’t know talking to them. Not only has the Wildcats’ senior class been playing with each other for a decade. They’ve also been winning for more than one, too.
Early success
In their second year of Pee Wee football, they beat Swain County in the Cracker Bowl. They then won it again as Termites and Midgets, with the latter win being one of their favorite memories of youth ball.
“We came out and smacked Robbinsville,” Bateman said. Waldroup was quick to add the score was 38-0.
Moments like that made them come back and endure the grueling practices. Arduous tasks seem more extreme when you’re younger, and this group had plenty of them.
Waldroup remembers bear crawling around a baseball field through the pouring rain, being screamed at by now Wildcats associate head coach Jamie Martin. Planks and core work were “terrible.” Austin Martin remembers doing roly-polies, which is when you roll in the direction a coach is pointing at until they say stop.
“It was the most awful thing I’ve ever done,” Bateman said.
But the winning and the camaraderie brought them back. They started attending Andrews Elementary School together, seeing each other in their classes. They remember going to Andrews High School games growing up, though never to watch the games.
“We just played under the bleachers,” center Alex Jones said.
There wasn’t much to watch. Before this senior class played varsity, the last time Andrews had a winning season was 2011. That team had a ton of hype around it, but didn’t come close to accomplishing what this year’s team has, finishing 9-5 overall and a distant third in the conference to 1AA state champion Swain County and 1A state champion Murphy.
Setting a new standard at Andrews didn’t really pop into their minds until getting to high school in fall 2019. Besides winning all the way through youth football, they took the disadvantage the Wildcats have always had and turned it into a positive.
They knew they’d have the smallest team, but knew their best 11 could beat anyone else’s. It always had.
The group has also played almost the same positions the whole way up, and no one has changed since midgets. The only addition to the group has been wide receiver/defensive back Cole Anderson, who said he didn’t start playing until high school because he didn’t like the helmets.
“Everybody has trust in one another, so we expect everyone to do their jobs as best they can,” Bateman said. “I think if everybody does our job as best we can, our 11 is better than anybody else’s.”
‘One more year’
As they got closer to high school, Jamie Martin started telling varsity head coach James Phillips that a really good group was coming. They won a junior varsity conference championship as freshmen, then started chipping away at a varsity conference title.
A 4-3 record in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season included Andrews’ first win over Swain County since 1998 and their most conference wins since 1985. As juniors, they finished 7-4 and beat Murphy for the first time since 1981 before falling at Starmount in the second round of the playoffs.
That was enough to get the town excited, though it wasn’t satisfying for the team. Last year, Andrews started 5-0, including a win against eventual 1A West regional champion Mitchell, before losing four out of its last six to end the year, with all four losses coming by a combined 29 points.
At the end of every season, after having a final meeting with the current seniors, Phillips immediately brings in the juniors to talk about goals for next year. After traveling four plus hours one way on a bus in playoff losses the previous two seasons, the goal was simple. Get as many home games as possible.
To do that, they knew it would take a conference championship, and possibly an undefeated regular season. It’s where their motto – “clean the table” – was born.
“We don’t want to have no mistakes like last year,” Isaac Weaver said. “Last year we had one more year, this year’s our last year and we’re done.”
That fueled their entire offseason, starting in the weight room. Summer workout participation was as high as it has been in Phillips’ seven years as head coach.
“Everybody knew that we had ultimately one goal,”
Bateman said. “And it shows the commitment to the goals we had. Everybody and the underclassmen were committed. Because we knew what goals we had set for ourselves and our team.”
It didn’t take long for the Wildcats to know they could have a potentially special season. After three dominant wins to start the year against subpar competition, Andrews traveled to Mitchell and beat the Mountaineers 44-27. It was the seniors’ first big road win, and after that they knew they could chase any goal they set.
The Wildcats’ 13 wins this year were by an average of 34.8 points per game. Most opponents have had hope at the start of a game and sometimes through a quarter before Andrews begins to impose its will.
With a perfect season came superstitions. The same lifts during the week. The same drills every two weeks at practice. The same pre-game dance party, with Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” blasting over a speaker. DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” is a must after the game, as well as Jamie Martin’s dancing.
“He ain’t a dancer,” Bateman said. “But I guess we’re just so excited we think he’s good.”
However, that’s nothing compared to Tatham’s
commitment to keeping the perfect season alive. He went to the same restaurants on the same day of the week, took the same route to get there and has to have the same amount of gas in his tank each time. Fill up at different stations? No, it had to be the Solo gas station in Marble. And only $5 at a time. Cash.
“On Mondays, it’s Mexican,” Tatham said. “On Tuesdays, I just drive to Robbinsville, North Carolina. On Wednesday, it’s Mariolino’s. Then on Thursday, it’s the casino.”
‘Having fun’ comes to end
Throughout the lead-up to this season, Phillips reminded his seniors that the season is like an hourglass. Once it starts, certain milestones come up faster than you expect, so make the most of it.
The Wildcats kept their hourglass running longer than most teams, but it ran out last Friday night in a 42-21 fourth-round loss to Draughn. When the buzzer sounded, the crushing reality hit that the decade-long journey of playing with their best friends had come to an end.
After a tear-filled final team huddle, Bateman gathered the seniors for their own private huddle. He told them he loved every moment he had with them, and he wouldn’t do anything differently. As players, coaches and family eventually walked off the field, the seniors all sat on the Wildcat logo at midfield, trying to delay taking off their Andrews jersey for the last time.
In the team’s final postgame huddle, Phillips talked about how this senior class were cornerstones, allowing him to finish the foundation and set the standard going forward for the Andrews program. And while this year’s seniors will remember that, they’ll remember more that they went through it together.
From the torture of youth practices, to running through the banner on Friday night, to spending as much time on the field after the final game as they could, just so it didn’t have to end.
“Just having fun with people, having fun with our teammates and coaches out here,” Austin Martin said. “That’s going to be the hardest part to miss.”