He's not a carpenter, but Tim Thornton has managed to build something at Woodruff from the ground up. And he started with a simple foundation.

"We focused on the accountability part of it where you can’t just come whenever you want – you’ve got to be here all of the time, everyday," explained Thornton, now in his fourth year as Warriors head coach. " We haven’t had anybody ineligible in the four years that we’ve been here. We haven’t had one person miss a game due to eligibility."

Four years ago, Thornton, a former Woodruff player himself, took over a program so thin, the Warriors failed to win a game. But Tim saw promise and two years later kept his promise and guided the Warriors to their first playoff berth in almost 20 years.

"It feels good," says senior linebacker Matt Aldrich. " It makes you work harder and it makes the other people behind you work harder and get everybody involved and just keep it going."

Thornton is the first Woodruff coach since Mike Bresko in the late 1980's to make back to back post–season appearances. And last fall the Warriors came within seconds of wrestling a conference title away from Richwoods. But quarterback Mitch Hidden, and others, have graduated and there's some re–building to do again.

"We lost a lot of guys that we had come to depend on for quite some time," said Thornton. "This is a challenge for us. As coaches we can’t take thing for granted and think, ‘ok, we taught it to them a few years ago and they still know what we’re talking about.’ Or, ‘ we don’t have to spend as much time on this stuff.’ We gone back to square one."

Woodruff has never gone to the playoffs three years in a row. Senior lineman Adrian Howard would like a conference title to go with that third straight playoff appearance.

"Hopefully we don’t have to worry about losing conference this year. Hopefully we will win conference. I believe we will win conference. I’m very confident we will win conference."