By DAN BISER
Sports Editor

A five-hour bus trip to Yadkin County awaits the West Columbus High football team Friday for its opening round playoff game with the defending state 1A champion Elkin Buckin’ Elks. Gametime is 7:30 p.m.

Coach Richard Grissom’s Elks have won three of the last four state 1A titles and are carrying the No. 2 seed in the West 1A brackets. Elkin has an 8-3 record and all three losses came when they had to forfeit their victories in the first three games for use of an ineligible player. The Elks still claimed the Northwest Conference championship with an 8-0 league record.

West Columbus is in the playoffs despite a 2-9 record that includes a 42-13 road loss to West Bladen last Friday. The Vikings finished tied for the sixth in the Southeastern 1A-2A Conference. They have the No. 15 seed in the 1A West bracket.

Unlike last year when Coach Vernon Brigman’s Vikings took a 7-4 record into the state playoffs and recorded a first-round home victory over Polk County, the 2006 season has been a struggle at West Columbus.

“We knew after last year when we lost so many seniors that we would have our work cut out for us, and it has turned into long season,” Brigman said. “The main objective this year is to not let our heads get down to continue to keep things positive.

“Our players have worked very hard this year,” he added. “We’ve had a good week of practice and have brought up about 10 players from the junior varsity. We plan to go to Elkin and give it our best shot.”

The game will feature two of the state’s top 1A backs in Elkin’s Dustin Miles and West Columbus’ Travis Leggett. Both earned 1A All-State honors last season.

It will be a homecoming of sorts for Coach Brigman. In 1990, he quarterbacked old Littlefield High School in a state 1A playoff game against at Elkin. Grissom’s Elkin squad won the game that was played in a driving rainstorm at Elkin.