Halfway through the 2026 football season, Polk County is returning for its longest – and last – homestand of the season.
The Wolverines will start a crucial stretch with a 1-4 record, with a win over Patton and losses to Chase, Newton-Conover, Landrum and Owen.
“I’m disappointed in our record because I feel like we’re good enough to have won more games,” Polk County coach Dustin Fry said. “I feel like that should be a little better.”
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The Wolverines have had some success on the ground, rushing for nearly 1,000 yards on the season, with 12 rushing TDs. The bulk of that has come courtesy of Styler Blackwell and Zach McCraw, with Blackwell rushing for more than 110 yards per game. Brody Wilkins has thrown for more than 600 yards, with RJ Simpson and Dre Thompson his top targets. Fry said that output has been encouraging.
“It’s nice to lean on that run game, you just don’t want to become one-dimensional,” he said. “But it’s nice when you’ve got Styler and Zach back there with the way they’ve been running. That makes you feel good as an O-line coach and as a coordinator, but as a head coach you’re looking at the big picture of things and you’d like to be playing better defense and more in the win column.”
Blackwell and fellow senior Sawyer Huff have been among the bright spots defensively, while sophomore Andy Serrano averages more than 10 tackles per game with four for loss.
Fry made it clear that the Wolverines’ effort is there, and he expects that to continue.
“Our guys play hard,” he said. “It’s one of those things where we can show them that we’re just a play here and there or execution or finishing, where things could have turned the other way but they didn’t. You don’t want them to be discouraged. You want them to keep working and keep fighting.
“We’ve got to keep pushing, keep working and keep getting better at the little things.”
Those little things are leading into a three-game home stretch that will feature games against Mitchell, Mountain Heritage and Madison – three games that will go a long way toward telling the tale of the season.
“We’ve got the next three weeks at home,” Fry said. “We need to just make sure we’re in games in the fourth quarter, that we’re playing four quarters of football and get back to where we’re in games and not out early on. And we want to make sure we’re playing with a purpose.
“We want to make a nice homestand for our crowd. It’s our last three games at home, the last home games for our seniors, and we just want to make a really good stand going into those last two weeks of the season and then hopefully the playoffs after that.”
