On the Road with Olivia and Alexa Episode 15: Buckhorn and Hazel Green

MADISON COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — Episode 15 of On the Road with Oliva and Alexa features two programs in Madison County: Buckhorn and Hazel Green.

The Bucks were 6-5 in 2024 making a playoff run that ended in the first round.

Head coach Matt Patterson enters his third season with the program, and he is excited about the amount of upperclassmen he has on his 2024 roster.

“I’m just excited by this group of seniors we’ve got,” He said. “We got 28 seniors probably 21 or 22 of those have been with us for 4 years. You know they’ve really paid their dues to get to this opportunity trying to build off a 6-4 regular season last year and another trip to the playoffs.”

Since Patterson took over in 2021, his standard has always been to improve year to year.

And now that the Bucks have hitched a ride to the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, he expects this year’s team to step it up even more.

“They hear me say it all the time, they’ll probably echo the same thing, 6-4 can’t be our standard you’ve already proved you could do that we got to take it another rung.” he said. “We got to take the next step and keep building each senior class that we’ve had has added to the foundation that we’ve started. These guys are going to do their job and pass it on down to the next group of seniors to come behind them there, so it’s just a building process and it’s a process that never stops.”

The Hazel Green Trojans are starting basically from scratch.

After a winless year in 2023, they’ve brought new life to the program with a new head coach in Fred Farrier.

And Farrier already has a mantra heading into his first season.

“You know we talk about flipping the dirt every day.” he said. “Our kids have been working to flip the dirt. You know, the Hazel Green community, there’s a lot of farms and land out there and people grow crops out there so they understand farming terms. So you can have a good crop some years you can have bad crop and reality of it is 2023 wasn’t a good crop. So the land has been sitting barren after harvest last year so you bring the new cultivators in and you flip the dirt when its time to re-seed the area and grow the new crop.”

It can be tough to get a team to buy into a new coaching philosophy, but Farrier says he’s seen his team embrace the new Hazel Green Way.

“If we can stack super small improvements on top of each other day by day we’ll have a chance to make some big improvements.” said coach Farrier.

Buckhorn kicks off its 2024 campaign hosting Decatur on August 23.

Hazel Green will also start things off at home taking on Huntsville.

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