There is little denying the intense rivalry that exists between Greenbrier East (1-0) and Woodrow Wilson (0-1).

It’s real and it’s palpable in most any sport in which the two teams compete.

And outside of basketball, football is where it is at its most intense.

“It’s always going to be exciting any time Woodrow and East get together no matter what else is taking place,” East coach Aaron Baker said. “It’s a rivalry for us, it’s a rivalry for them, our kids are excited and their kids are going to be excited. That’s what makes high school football so exciting, when two teams that have such a long-standing rivalry get together to play.”

Woodrow Wilson coach John H. Lilly is looking past that for tonight’s game in Fairlea.

“That’s not the way we are approaching it,” Lilly said when asked about last year’s 39-34 loss to the Spartans in Beckley. “We have to get better at what we are doing. Saying that would be the easy way out.

“We know the significance of this game. And I don’t want to downplay it, but we’re not taking the vindictive route. We have to get better at what we’re doing. We’ve got to tackle, we’ve got to block. We have to want to do that.”

Greenbrier East is coming off a 24-22 win over Lincoln last week.

Three turnovers helped Lincoln make a game of it. And that was the focus for Baker and company this week in practice.

“That was the disappointing factor,” Baker said. “There were some bright spots. We have a lot of experience back from ’09. We expected those guys to make plays and they did. The turnovers were the biggest thing for us and we worked on that. We have to limit that against Woodrow because they’ll take advantage of whatever we give them.”

Lilly was disappointed with last week’s 55-12 loss to George Washington.

“Extremely disappointed,” Lilly said. “Nobody saw that coming. I didn’t see that coming. There were no red flags that that was going to be the case. When you’ve got two people standing beside a George Washington receiver and he goes up to get the ball, on 60-yard pass, well ... at some point wearing Beckley across your chest has to mean something. You have to take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.”

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Another game with potential payback as the backdrop in Greenbrier County is Richwood paying a visit to Greenbrier West.

Cavaliers coach Lewis McClung tried to downplay that as a factor after his team was one of 10 regular-season victims of the Lumberjacks last year.

“We just want to play well. I don’t really give in to that revenge-factor stuff,” McClung said. “Sometimes when you play for revenge you get so amped up that you don’t play well. I’m sure it’s in the back of some of our kids’ heads and the fans’ heads. We just want to focus. It’s the next game on the schedule, so right now it’s the most important game.”

Richwood will be without starting quarterback Sam Tindal, who tore his lateral collateral ligament in last week’s 34-0 win over Webster County. He is week-to-week. Zach Bennett will start in his place.

West beat Shady Spring 53-14.

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In another quarterback change, Oak Hill (0-1) will likely be without starting sophomore quarterback Kyaolo Bradford tonight when its hosts Mount Hope in the annual clash for the Little Brown Jug.

Bradford was scheduled to have a procedure done on his ear this morning.

Coach Casey Crane will turn to Noah Smith, a first-year senior wide receiver.

“He’s a smart kid,” Crane said of Smith. “We called a play wrong in practice this week and he knew right away that the play was wrong.”

Smith hasn’t played football since middle school.

“He’s got a pretty good knack for the game for not playing in a few years,” Crane said.

Oak Hill fell to Fayetteville 47-20 last week while it’s the season opener for Mount Hope.

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Nicholas County coach Gene Morris would like to see his Grizzlies (1-0) put together two good halves tonight when his team visits Logan.

He didn’t feel that was the case in Nicholas County’s 36-0 win over Clay to open the season.

The Grizzlies will need it against the Wildcats, who have added members of last year’s Class AAA state championship basketball team to the grid roster this season.

“They spread the ball out and they’ve got some good receivers,” Morris said. “They jumped on Man 21-0 and never looked back (in a 55-18 win last week). They’ve got those skill-type receivers where you just have to throw the ball in their general area and they go get it. We’ll have our work cut out for us.”

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Fayetteville will try to make it 2-0 on the year and 2-0 in Fayette County when the Pirates host Midland Trail.

 The Pirates beat Oak Hill while Trail fell to Independence 29-20.

“I know they are real big overall and they’ve got great size,” Spangler said. “Their quarterback (Casey) Deskins is about 6-foot-2 and I was impressed by what I saw of him. And they are running a different (no-huddle) offense than the usual power football they play. Sometimes people use the no-huddle just to say they are running the no-huddle and other times they run it because they want to. We’ll see what happens.”

— E-mail: demorrison@register-herald.com