By Erik Harris
The Alabama High School Athletics Association will release its 2016-18 reclassification results on Wednesday. Depending on those results, the longtime gridiron rivalry between Hewitt-Trussville and Clay-Chalkville could be in danger of coming to an end.
The Huskies have been competing in Class 7A for the past two seasons while Clay-Chalkville has compiled a 29-1 record on its journey through Class 6A.
As one of the largest 6A schools in the state, the Cougars are a prime candidate to make the jump into 7A competition, where they could land in the same region with Hewitt-Trussville. That decision will be announced on Wednesday.
The Huskies along with Pinson Valley (currently a 6A competitor) seem certain to stay in their respective classifications for the near future.
Clay-Chalkville head football coach Jerry Hood and Hewitt-Trussville’s Josh Floyd aren’t sure what results will come later this week.
“It depends on whether they stay with 32 teams (in Class 6A) or if they expand to 34 or 36. If they expand to 34 or 36, I would expect us to be in 7A,” said Hood. “If they stay at 32, I don’t know which way it will go yet.”
If the Cougars stay put in 6A, Hood isn’t sure what will become of his program’s rivalry with Hewitt-Trussville.
“I know for a fact that Pinson wants to play, so whether we’re in the region or out of the region, we’re going to schedule Pinson and I hope that Trussville would continue to want to play because it’s one of the greatest rivalries in Alabama. There’s a great interest in that rivalry. We really want to keep that going.”
“I know they (Hewitt-Trussville) are discussing whether it’s viable for them to play us or not and hopefully they’ll decide that we’re worthy of their competition,” said Hood.
Floyd and the Huskies, regardless of what Wednesday’s announcement reveals, will do what’s best for the program.
“At the end of the day, I think we’ve got to do what’s best for our team and I don’t know what that means right now,” said Floyd.
Hewitt-Trussville will start next season against Montgomery Bell (Tenn.) and has other out of state programs looking to schedule them, according to Floyd. With seven or possibly eight region games on the 2016 schedule, the open dates are few for both the Huskies and the Cougars.
“Any time you can bring notoriety to your program or get your program out there on a (national) stage, I think it can be a positive thing,” said Floyd. “Hopefully we’ll be able to figure all of this out in the next couple of days.”
Erik Harris is the Sports Editor for the Trussville Tribune. Follow him on Twitter @jeharris2 or email him at jmseharris2@gmail.com.