LIMESTONE COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) – We head out to Limestone County for episode eleven of On the Road with Olivia and Claudia, featuring the West Limestone Wildcats and East Limestone Indians.

The Wildcats are coming off of their second straight 5-5 season where they once again missed out on the playoffs. Injuries hurt them last year and Class 4A Region 7 is once again loaded, but head coach Shelby Davis said it’s time to put those things behind them because the goal every year is to play for a region title.

“I think they’re bought in, they’ve been bought in since year three,” David said. “When you play in a tough region we play in, you’ve got to show up and be ready to go and when you get banged up and you lose guys, it’s hard to hide them in our region, a lot of good football, a lot of good coaches.”

“We graduated last year one of the very few teams to ever graduate from West Limestone without having a losing record. These guys sitting up here, they’ve played three years and not had a losing record but these guys have made it a point and a focus to clean up some of the things that we haven’t been doing in the past and commit themselves. They don’t want to go 5-5, they want something more. These guys were freshmen when we went 11-2, 11-2 is a whole lot more fun than 5-5 so they’ve worked really hard,” Davis said.

Not only do these seniors want to leave with another winning record, but Davis really wants to send them out on top – as this is a pretty special class for the sixth-year head coach.

“They were in the seventh grade when I got there, so we’ve been together for six years. It hasn’t always been pretty. Any time you develop those close relationships with these guys, you get to know each other really well and I know how to push their buttons and they know how to push my buttons. It’s been fun. One of the best parts about this job is to see these young boys grow up and turn into young men. I hate that it’s their senior year I’ll tell you that,” Davis added.

Moving over to East Limestone, year one at the helm for Clint Woodfin was pretty good: a 5-6 record with their third straight postseason appearance. Now with some time with the program and more time spent learning about his guys under his belt, Woodfin feels a lot more confident going into this fall.

“I think about this time last year, I think I had been on the job for two or three weeks. It was all kind of drinking water from a fire hydrant. So I think having a year under our belt, I think for our kids understanding how we go about doing things, I think the offseason has been very well. We are way ahead of where we were last year, I like the work that we’ve been able to put in, our guys have done a great job of committing and putting the work in. We’ve done a lot of football work, a lot of strength and conditioning work,” Woodfin said.

The Indians haven’t had a playoff win since 2018, so of course the team wants to get back to the playoffs and make a bit of a run. But Woodfin says that’s not the main focus as they’re just taking it one day – and one game – at a time.

“You can’t help but talk about winning but what I want to see, day in and day out, I want to see consistency of excellence when it comes to the work. I want to see winning effort, I want to see winning excellence, I want to see winning execution. The wins and losses take care of itself, but if we’re doing what we need to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday, if we know our job and we do our job and we straight to the finish, that’s all that matters,” Woodfin added.

Woodfin and the Indians will host Athens next Thursday while Davis and the Wildcats will visit Ardmore the next day.