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POWDERSVILLE—The Powdersville High football team has struggled in its first varsity season, accumulating an overall record of 0-8 with just two games remaining on the schedule.

Head Coach Robert Mustar says records may not be indicative of the season, however.

“Obviously, the record wasn’t exactly what we were looking for,” said Mustar. “Whether it’s our first season or whatever season we’re looking at, you have expectations of winning ball games. We haven’t been able to do that.”

Mustar says his team was in quite a few games throughout the course of the year.

“I truly believe that when you look back on this, whether it’s at the end of this season or 10 years down the road, you will see that, for our first season, there were a lot of ball games that we were in,” said Mustar. “If you look at these first four games, we’re in every one of them.”

Even in games where the Patriots held a three score lead (week one against Pendleton), a win still eluded them. Mustar says he knew going into the season that his squad would face some adversity.

“We knew the odds were going to be stacked against us being a first year program,” said Mustar. “A lot of people were saying, ‘well, you don’t have a senior class.’ I told our kids that they were going to hear that, but not to use it as an excuse. You go out there and compete.”

Mustar says his team has had to deal with a little bit of everything, including tragedy. Just before the game against Crescent, Patriots defender Josh Dial lost his sister Lacee in a tragic car accident. Mustar says his team’s goal that week was to be there for their teammate.

“We had a pretty emotional week that week,” said Mustar. “We lost someone pretty close to us. You wonder where our heads are, and I think they were where they should have been that week, and that was with the Dial family.”

The Patriots have also been plagued with injuries. Powdersville recently lost its starting quarterback, Jordan Smith, to an elbow injury.

“Football is a physical contact sport and you’re going to have injuries,” said Mustar. “We’ve had some untimely injuries and it seems like when we finally get a kid back, here goes another kid with an injury. That can be expected in any program, not just a first year program.”

With two home games left, Mustar is encouraging his team to finish strong.

“After this last game, we just got them in the locker room and talked to them. We told them that they’re not going to the playoffs. That scenario is done,” said Mustar. “We told them that they needed to act like these last two games were their playoff games, and hopefully we go out there and compete.”

“Hopefully we’ll win the next two,” said Mustar. “That would give us a lot of confidence going into the off season. You have to learn how to finish, and we want to see if we can finish on a good note.”

The one message Mustar says he hopes to convey to his players is that the season is not over.

“We’re not done yet,” said Mustar. “We still play Carolina and we still play Blacksburg to wrap it up. I think when it’s all said and done, we’ll be able to look back and notice that our kids did some pretty special things.”

Kick off against Carolina is set for 7:30 p.m.