LAURINBURG — Kendrell Sellers watched from the sideline as his teammates pulled off an improbable run to last year’s state championship game.
It wasn’t a fun experience.
“I’m not gonna lie, it hurt a lot,” the senior Scotland High offensive lineman said. “You always want to be on the field with your brothers, play with them and get a win.
“Sometimes, it is how it is,” he added. “Like my mom says, God works in mysterious ways.”
Sellers was one of several Scots who suffered season-ending injuries last year. He tore an ACL early in the season, leaving the Scots without one of its most experienced leaders in the trenches.
After a long rehabilitation period that extended into the team’s humid summer workouts, Sellers was finally ready to return. And he came back to a battle-hardened group of offensive lineman who were ready for another shot at a state championship.
“Bigger, stronger, faster,” senior lineman Ken Pruitte said. “We had to get better so we could come back and win it this time.”
Those improvements were evident in Scotland’s first two games of the season. The offensive line’s efforts helped Scotland’s running back corps tally a combined 417 yards in those two games. Scotland’s quarterbacks threw for just under 300 yards in that same span.
The linemen are a “tight bunch,” Pruitte said, and that chemistry has helped them improve over the past couple years. The group spends a lot of time together, whether it involves working out, grabbing a meal or relaxing away from the field.
But hard work has been perhaps the most important ingredient to their success.
“We have a lot of experience coming from last year, we were pretty young,” senior Jalin McLean said. “We got everything together — working hard, practicing hard, trying to get better every day.”
They don’t always get publicity for it, but the offensive linemen play big roles in the execution of Scotland’s schemes, especially when it comes to helping the running game. Scotland has had several star running backs come through the program in recent history, and this year is no different. Many different players have carried the ball for Scotland this year. That group brings a mixture of speed, strength and versatility to the backfield.
They’re all dangerous when they break through the line of scrimmage.
“Our main goal is to stay aggressive, try to stay low and stay on our blocks and make holes for our running backs,” McLean said. “Our running backs run pretty hard. We’ve just got to make the holes.”
With Sellers back in the mix, the offensive line’s upside is big this year. But they know there’s still plenty of hard work ahead of them.
“Like coach (Scott) Barbour says, it’s effort and heart,” Sellers said. “I you can’t put either of those two in, it doesn’t work out.”
