‘Go West, young man’: area neighbors Shelby and Salisbury fight for state 2AA crown
This year’s state 2AA football championship game is really a Western Regional final.
Two schools clearly sitting in the western half of the state — Shelby and Salisbury — will meet at 11 a.m. Saturday at Wake Forest University’s BB&T Field in Winston-Salem for the state crown.
Shelby (13-1), which has won a state football championship five of the last six years, will represent the West.
Salisbury (13-2), in the state finals for the first time in nine years, will represent the Eastern region. And therein lies one of several storylines behind this 2AA title contest.
“We’re definitely road warriors,” says Salisbury head coach Brian Hinson. “Counting round trips, we logged more than 1,000 miles in two weeks during the playoffs.”
How Salisbury got in the “East” and was forced to travel so much is part of the N.C. playoff system. The N.C. High School Athletic Association takes the pool of 2A playoff qualifiers, and divides them in half, according to size. Bigger schools go into the 2AA brackets. Smaller schools are 2A.
This year, there weren’t enough schools in the eastern half of the state to fill the 2AA bracket, so the East “borrowed” Salisbury, Mount Pleasant, North Davidson and Oak Grove (near Winston-Salem).
Salisbury faced Mount Pleasant in the first round of the playoffs, then had to travel to Washington (about 490 miles round-trip) and Hertford County (515 miles) in the second and third rounds.
“It kind of shows the fortitude and toughness of our players,” Hinson says.
As top seed, Shelby played all its postseason games at home. And Golden Lions’ head coach Mike Wilbanks says Salisbury has the kind of players who could survive such a schedule.
“They’re a very tough team,” he says of the Hornets. “Their defense is tremendous. The defensive line is unbelievable, and their linebackers are really good. Jalon Walker — wow!”
Walker, a sophomore linebacker, is getting interest from most of the Carolinas’ ACC schools, according to recruiting services.
This game appears like a collision of Shelby’s explosive offense, which averages 46 points a game, against Salisbury’s defense, which is allowing an average of 8 points and has held 11 of its 15 opponents to fewer than 10.
“Let’s face it, Shelby is a powerhouse,” Hinson says. “But we’ve been keeping at it all year, getting a little better all the time.”
Shelby’s offense begins with senior quarterback Isaiah Bess, who has thrown for nearly 3,500 yards and 40 touchdowns this season. The Golden Lions have two receivers with more than 1,000 yards in receptions.
Salisbury’s eye-catching stats are on defense, but quarterback Vance Honeycutt (a UNC baseball commit) runs an efficient offense and has thrown for 400 yards in the last three games.
Wilbanks is in his first year as Shelby’s head coach, after 13 years as an assistant at the school. Hinson is in his third season after serving as head coach at East Rowan and a college assistant at Coastal Carolina and Catawba.
“The culture of winning is strong here,” Wilbanks says of Shelby, which made its first state championship appearance in 1924, losing 7-0 to Rockingham. “It brings some pressure. But it’s better to have that kind of pressure than what you get from losing a lot.”
Hinson wants that kind of culture at Salisbury.
“I think getting to the state championship can be a program-changer,” he says. “I think it can make Salisbury football something that kids want to be involved with.”
Steve Lyttle on Twitter: @slyttle
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 2:14 PM.