It’s that time of the year — time to monitor the WVSSAC football ratings with a keen eye.

Even the coaches are doing it.

Liberty went into this weekend’s game rated No. 15 in Class AA.

Only 16 teams in each class make it to the playoffs.

With a victory over Shady Spring and the subsequent losses of five teams rated higher than the Raiders, their position is likely to improve heading into the final week of the regular season.

“We’re definitely keeping an eye on it,” admitted Liberty coach Jeff Alexander. “We’re thinking that we should get to No. 11 or No. 12 (this week). We’ll have to wait on the PikeView game to know exactly. We want to move up. Some of it isn’t in our control. But we have to do our part and win.

Liberty must travel to Wyoming East (1-8) Friday to finish the regular season.

Alexander won’t let his team look past the Warriors, he promised.

“We need to focus this week,” Alexander said. We got the Senior Night behind us now. It was very emotional. We have to try to do things a lot better. Wyoming East isn’t bad. They could upset us. We don’t want to back into the playoffs.”

Liberty certainly has every right to feel much better now than its No. 15 rating last week allowed.

No. 5 Keyser (6-3), No. 7 James Monroe (7-2), No. 10 Chapmanville (6-3), No. 11 Herbert Hoover (6-3) and No. 14 Oak Glen (6-4) all went down in defeat on Friday. No. 12 PikeView (5-3) will play Oak Hill Monday night in a postponed game.

Liberty won’t have to look over its shoulder either.

All four teams rated directly below the Raiders — No. 16 Greenbrier West (6-4), No. 17 Scott (4-5), No. 18 Shady Spring (5-5) and No. 19 Tolsia (4-5) lost Friday.

Forecasting a best case scenario, Alexander expressed hopes of climbing as high as No. 10 in the final ratings with a victory Friday.

But that would give Liberty a tough road test i the first round against the No. 7 squad.

“Anybody rated in the top 7 or 8 is a pretty solid football team,” Alexander said. “All of them, on any given day, could win it all. It will be a tough draw for us.

“If everything falls right, 10 is about as high as we could get. But a whole lot has to happen.”

The top eight teams get a first round home game, definitely an advantage due to long travel involved in a geographically state-wide playoff bracket.

“It is an advantage, especially on the longer trips,” Alexander pointed out. “It’s hard to keep the kids focused on long trips. You can decide to leave on Friday and stay in a motel and play on Saturday afternoon. But the kids usually stay up late and come in sluggish. Anything longer than a two hour trip is hard.”

The Week 11 ratings will be released Tuesday. The final ratings determining playoff pairings along with sites, dates and times will be revealed next Sunday afternoon at the WVSSAC offices in Parkersburg.

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Call it pure determination.

Westside’s Nick Lambert, the other half of Westside’s “Touchdown Twins” along with Kennedy Award candidate Travis Whitten, could not play anywhere other than punter Friday night in the Renegades’ 43-6 victory over Iaeger.

Lambert responded with two outstanding punts. The first was a “coffin corner” kick, going from the Westside 43 yard-line to the Iaeger 2, a 55 yarder. The second went from the Renegades’ 33 to the Iaeger 4 for a 63 yard boot.

“Nick had a knee injury last week in the first half against Summers County,” revealed Westside coach Darren Thomas. “We were going to try to play him a little bit on defense, but he just couldn’t go. We tried to put him at slotback once on offense and he got hit on that knee and he just couldn’t go.”

Lambert was determined to still be a contributor.

“He told me, ‘Coach, I can still punt,’” said Thomas. ‘I just can’t cut.’”

“My goodness, those were super punts.”

Thomas said Lambert’s knee should be healed by the playoffs.

— E-mail: jworkman@

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