MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Morgantown High will begin its 2021 football season in the deep end of the pool.
“If you’re going to play those good teams eventually, why not open up with them?” noted Mohigans second-year coach Sean Biser.
The Mohigans kick off against defending Class AAA state champion South Charleston at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Pony Lewis Field, and the Black Eagles are capable of finishing the full run that was denied them last winter when all three other state semifinalists had to bow out of the tournament due to a failure to meet Covid protocols.
South Charleston is led by junior quarterback Trey Dunn, and some locals will likely be hoping this won’t be his last trip to Morgantown for a football game.
The top-rated quarterback in the state accounted for 1,865 passing yards and 30 touchdowns in an abbreviated season.
“He’s got some wheels to go with his arm,” Biser said. “He is special.”
South Charleston ran roughshod over the competition in the regular season, outscoring opponents 307-92 in those six contests. No one came within three scores of the Black Eagles.
“The type of athletes they have, Mondrell Dean and a couple other receivers are really tall,” Biser said. “They stretch you vertically.”
And it’s not as if that’s the only issue an offense that averaged 51 points per game last year presents to opposing defenses. South Charleston has a sophisticated playbook for a high school team.
“They’re really good in the screen game,” Biser said. “And almost every run they have there appears to have some sort of [run-pass option] built into the run.”
A Mohigan upset would represent the trademark win for Biser in his second season leading the Morgantown program, and obviously that’s the goal for opening night.
“We fully expect to play to win the game,” Biser said. “But we want game-level experience against high competition. No matter what happens, it’s going to be a good experience for us in terms of learning.”
The experience will provide Morgantown with an eye-opener as to what it takes to become a state championship-caliber team, and that’s precisely the type of goal Biser wants for his program in the long run.
“As Morgantown High School, that’s the type of thing we need to be doing,” he said. “There’s not a lot of cupcakes on our schedule.
“We need to challenge ourselves and be ready to play that [caliber] schedule week-in and week-out. In terms of building our program, that’s right where we need to be right now.”
