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Kenny Fey

Pendleton High School's Hack Sullivan (2) leaps over the tackle of a Seneca defender and into the end zone during the Bulldogs' win over the Bobcats last Friday at Bobcat Stadium in Seneca. Pendleton will square off with another Western AAA foe, West-Oak, this Friday night at Warrior Stadium in Westminster.

PENDLETON — It’s been a little more than a week since tragedy struck the Pendleton High School football team as Avery Robinson passed away last Tuesday, and now the Bulldogs are trying their best to get back to some sort of normalcy after the untimely loss of the freshman wide receiver.

But moving on from such an event is something that is much easier said than done, which was evidenced by the lack of noise coming from the practice field on Monday.

With the students off for the day, the plan was originally for the football team to hold practice in the morning, just as Sutherland has done on Labor Day for each of the past 23 years during his coaching career.

But Sutherland and the Bulldogs weren’t anywhere to be seen at the practice field on Labor Day morning, as he gave his team the day off to refresh itself following its emotional win in Robinson’s honor last Friday at Seneca, and his funeral on Saturday.

“To be honest, I didn’t have anything left after Friday night,” Sutherland said.

But now as Pendleton gets ready to make the trek back to Oconee County on Friday night to take on West-Oak, the Bulldogs are now trying to regain their footing and move on with the season as best they can, and that involves getting back into the swing of a weekly routine.

“Now we have to get on that routine, and you hear ‘routine’ being a bad thing, but I think it’s actually going to be a good thing building up towards Friday,” Sutherland said. “It’s a challenge for us coming off last week, but luckily it’s a lot easier to come off that after a win than it would be a close defeat.”

After getting back to the practice field on Tuesday afternoon, a day usually reserved for the hardest hitting of the week, the Bulldogs came out fresh, as Sutherland said the team was able to enjoy itself, and it’s maybe a little closer following the events of last week.

“Yeah, we lost practice time, and yeah, it was hard and we had a lot of distractions, but come crunch time this group, and I credit my seniors, really all drew it back together from a closeness standpoint,” Sutherland said.

Following the strong showing at Seneca last week, Sutherland is optimistic his team will avoid a letdown at West-Oak, unlike the last time the two squads went at it in Westminster during the 2006 season.

In what he calls one of the worst games of his career, Sutherland and the Bulldogs ventured to Westminster, and West-Oak caught them sleeping a week removed from having their 29-game regular season winning streak snapped by Abbeville with 20-14 upset victory.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then, though, and Sutherland hopes coming off a win like last week’s over Seneca will have his team prepared for the Warriors.

“Games like last week are the whole reason you play a schedule like we’re playing,” Sutherland said. “We don’t want them to get into crunch time in a region game and not have been there before.”

The Bulldogs and Warriors will kick off at 7:30 p.m. on Friday night.