[Orange Blaze]

It’s a little deeper then just the lack of talent. Russell has definitely had some great football teams. Then have probably had at least two more f the top five teams to ever come out of this area. With that being said….for years Russell feasted on weak competition. They have always been in a sorry sorry district and have had the opportunity of playing the first couple rounds of the playoffs against subpar teams. When the Rams had to play the Beechwood district in the early 90’s there was no chance of advancing in the playoffs. I disagree with the kids coming to Raceland having anything to do with the fall in f Russell. One or two kids don’t make that big of a difference on a football team. Now if Raceland had ten kids from Russell I would agree but one or two every three years didn’t cause the demise of Russell football. But that seems to be all anyone ever wants to talk about. Maynard never won a game at Raceland he wasn’t supposed to. You couple subpar coaching with an over all lack of interest from what use to be an eager student body in football and you get where Russell is currently at as a program.

That's a pretty bold statement about a coach with the resume of Maynard's. Cmon.

Name one game then. When he was the head coach at Raceland he never won a game where the other team was as good or better than Raceland. There’s only been one coach at Raceland that’s won games they had no business winning and that was Vanderhoof. Now I do believe he’s won at least one game at Russell he had no business winning and that was a game at Ironton. I can’t remember what year it was but Russell did beat a Ironton team that was better than them that year just not that night.

His last season at Raceland was Raceland’s first regional championship win against Pikeville.  Also in that season he had broken Fairview’s 3 year regular season winning streak on the field (for the sake of this discussion I’m not looking at the Fairview vacated wins).  Hate him or love him but you have to admit that Maynard played a very important role in helping Raceland build the foundation for where the program is at today.

---

Also in the next season he took Russell to the Semi finals in his first year there. As for the state of the program now, I don’t think they have been bad but they just don’t have the guys they had when they were having their run from 2002-2007.