Ask pretty much any football coach, and he will tell you that an obstacle course posing as a season isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just as heat hardens steel and produces diamonds, a stretch of gruel generally makes a team better over time …

… Provided, of course, that said stretch is intermittent and said time doesn’t extend from preseason practices to the very last game.

Unfortunately for coach Wes Wood and the Snyder Tigers, 2022 didn’t offer that provision. Last year’s “hill to climb” never offered a view of the summit — even from Day 1 of fall workouts.

From the first August whistle through the next three months, the Tigers lost seven starters to season-ending injuries, and at various junctures of the campaign, the team’s training and medical staff were tending to a like amount of reserves who had to sit out parts and spans of games while hurt.