[Tomcat68]

I think Matney is the biggest jerk in all of highschool sports. GO TOMCATS.

Those are very strong words. I don't know him personally, but as a coach I absolutely despise him, too. He did some very embarrassing things to Ashland my freshmen year that cost me to lose a lot of respect for him. I think he is a great coach though. It just seems as though his ethics were very wrong that night. I don't know if it was a one night happening or if it was a normal occurance.

Then the following year our game fell on the week of the 9/11 attacks. His team was doing very poorly that season after graduating nearly 25 seniors the year before. The entire state was going to continue playing football that weekend. He on the other hand, refused to make the trip to Ashland and play. Instead he tried to not play us at all that season. The only problem with that was that if we did not fufill playing our district schedule, it would have ruled us ineligible for the playoffs. Finally the KHSAA ruled that it would be a forfeit game unless his team made the trip to Ashland to play the game. In turn, we were forced to play varsity games on Monday and Friday of that week.

I understand that he may have been trying to give his team every opportunity to sneak by the radar and get a victory. In my eyes though, and many of the Tomcat faithful, it was done entirely under the wrong circumstances of 9/11. Maybe there were other reasons that were unknown to our community, but without that knowledge, it seemed very, very tasteless.