[HDE]

What are the strengths of this year's team they should be playing to?
If you're talking about opening up the offense and using Harlan County's speed, I don't see that working because they don't have nearly the speed they had the past three or four years.
As for comparing to other county schools, Cawood opened with around 1,200 students and stayed above 1,000 well into the 1980s, so I think there is plenty of room to compare there. HCHS is basically the same size.
The other schools played on the Class 2A or 1A level, and I don't see a reason why you can't compare their level of success in their class to what Harlan County has done.
As for the idea that combining schools makes you an automatic powerhouse, that simply isn't true. The Whitley guys seem to like that argument, but Whitley opened in the 1960s and didn't win a district or regional title for decades (unless I'm forgetting one). Changing coaches fairly regularly did nothing for them.