Clinton Township Chippewa Valley football coach Scott Merchant, left, oversees practice for a playoff game against Macomb Dakota.
The last time Clinton Township Chippewa Valley hosted rival Macomb Dakota in a football playoff game was 1999.
Greg Baur was a Chippewa Valley assistant coach back then. Now he’s the head coach at Dakota.
“I spent six years there as an assistant coach,’’ Baur said. “I remember that game well. Dakota beat us.’’
Indeed, Dakota won, 34-28. The following week, it lost an epic battle to Clarkston, 57-56.
This year, both teams finished 2-3 in the Macomb Area Conference Red Division and 6-3 overall. Dakota was picked to finish first in a preseason poll of coaches, and Chippewa Valley was picked last. Neither happened.
Coach Scott Merchant “was very upset, and that gave us a lot of motivation,” Chippewa Valley senior running back Steven Charles Jr. said of the prognostications. “It gave us the encouragement to get where we are right now. We were confident at the beginning of the season. We thought we had a lot of talent, but we were young.’’
Even with a sophomore quarterback in Tommy Schuster and a senior class that won just one game as junior varsity players, Merchant thought his team deserved more respect. It enters the playoffs on a four-game winning streak.
“I understand why they did it, because we had only four starters returning out of 22,’’ Merchant said. “I guess I’d like to think our body of work over the last four or five years would tend to say we wouldn’t finish last. We’ve never finished last in the division. I get it, but I didn’t like it.
“For this team to make the playoffs, being so young, is a huge step for our program. It gives us an extra week to practice and extend the season and continue to compete. To host a playoff game is a testament to how tough our conference is and how tough our schedule was this year. We played seven teams that were in the playoff hunt going into Week 9.’’
On Oct. 7, the Big Reds beat the visiting Cougars in a regular-season game for the first time in 12 years, 40-38.
“Beating Dakota for the first time meant a lot to the seniors and the program,’’ senior running back Darian Greeley said. “Everybody came in saying we were going to lose. We proved everybody wrong.’’
But Dakota finally is healthy, getting injured running back Kaiser Carleton and wide receiver Evan Sivec back.
Baur, in his first-year as head coach, went through peaks and valleys this year, but a 45-7 victory over defending Division 1 champion Romeo sparked a 4-1 record down the stretch.
“I think we’re peaking at the right time,’’ he said. “It’s good for us. Kaiser and Evan both came back at the same time. I think it was Week 5 for us. We started going on a little roll there and stumbled a little bit at Chippewa Valley. The last couple of games, we’ve recovered pretty nicely. I like the way we are playing.
“When Evan and Kaiser were out, it was no coincidence that we lost two games. Both games, we should have won. We lost one game late (Warren Mott). One game, we didn’t recover an onside kick, and the other game, we gave up a Hail Mary. We very easily could be 8-1 right now. We’re not, but I still like our chances.’’
Michigan high school football playoff pairings (updated with times)