Nothing in baseball can match an ace pitcher, not even the weight of history.
WOODBURN – Coach Sherwood Haydock’s first football players recruited from Woodlan to play college ball will include a pair of running backs, one of them his son. The Warriors’ Zac Haydock (Saint Francis) and Brad Nelson (Kentucky Christian) both signed letters of intent Wednesday at the school.
“It says a lot to have our two running backs sign with colleges,” Sherwood Haydock said.
The Haydocks finished their first season at Woodlan after coming over from Harding. Sherwood Haydock had been the Hawks’ coach for nearly a decade, and the last three years, his starting quarterback has been Zac.
But because Woodlan already had an established signal-caller in Brock Hines, and Zac Haydock had added a lot of muscle, he was switched to running back this year and ran for nearly 600 yards.
“I classify myself as a football player,” Zac said. “I will play any position. Whatever they want me to do, I will do it.”
Sherwood Haydock said his son will be used as a short-yardage back and H-back, with some possible time at tight end, with the Cougars.
“We knew his position in college would be a running back, and he grew himself out of a quarterback in the weight room,” said Sherwood, who added that Zac ran the ball in a lot of Wildcat-type formations at Harding. “His transition from quarterback to running back wasn’t that difficult because we ran him so much.”
Sherwood Haydock coached Harding to two Class 2A state title games, winning one, but was in the market for a job when Harding closed last spring. He brought along his son and some other Harding players to Woodlan.
“It was a good switch for the situation that it was,” Zac said of coming over to Woodlan for only his senior season. “We would all still like to be out at Harding, but we had no choice.”
Not only will Zac Haydock be close to home, but he’s familiar with the Cougars.
“We have been going to games there for eight years, and we have had five lettermen from Harding go there,” Sherwood Haydock said. “We are following in footsteps that we wanted.”
Although Wooodlan struggled in Sherwood Haydock’s first season as coach, at 1-10 and 0-6 in the ACAC, Nelson said the program should be on the upswing under the coach’s leadership.
“The Warriors will have some great potential in the next couple of years,” Nelson said. “I am glad coach Haydock is here to make a difference. He changed the way we work out in the weight room and the way we practice in the offseason. It’s going to pay off in the long run.”
Nelson said the Kentucky Christian program is a young one that has been in existence for only about six years.
