ROANOKE RAPIDS — There has been a buzz (no pun intended) around the Roanoke Rapids Yellow Jackets football community this week.

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The squad captured their first Northern Carolina Conference title in years after defeating rival Northwest Halifax last week and will make their first playoff appearance since 2005. The fans are excited as Roanoke Rapids prepares to take on North Brunswick at 7 p.m. on Saturday evening, but for Russell Weinstein’s squad it’s been like any other week.

“I think there is a buzz around the community this week,” Weinstein said. “But as far as the kids are concerned I see the same attitude about them they had the last half of the season ... it’s kind of been business as usual and I like that.”

Mother nature has played a part in the practice routine this week and forced the game to be moved to Saturday, something out of the norm for the team, not to mention this will be the first playoff game for the majority of the players on the roster. Only two players have participated in a playoff game and they were both transfers from other programs.

“It’s a new experience for them,” Weinstein said. “The good thing is we are at home and that helps.”

Even though the post season is new to the players on the field, the sideline is loaded with coaches who have coached in the playoffs. “We are trying to prepare them the best we can to perform the best they can,” Weinstein said.

The veteran coach believes once the whistle blows playoff experience won’t matter, it will come down to which team can execute the best and find a way to win in the fourth quarter of a tight contest. Finding a way to win hasn’t been a problem for the Yellow Jackets for the last six weeks. Roanoke Rapids has won six consecutive games and has gained confidence in each contest, the highlight being last week’s blowout over the Vikings. The Yellow Jackets scored a total of 93 points the last two weeks of the season, while only giving up 14. Roanoke Rapids expects to win every time they take the field, a whole new mentality from the Yellow Jacket team Weinstein inherited two seasons ago.

“It’s been a lot of hard work by the players and coaches,” he said. “I just think we’ve got very, very good senior leadership on this team. This group of seniors did not want to go out as losers. I don’t know another way to say it. They put the time and effort in to get this thing going in the right direction.”

Roanoke Rapids has never won a playoff game in school history, but this group of players don’t worry about what happened in the past.

Right now they are concerned with the Scorpions and not what has happened in the schools’ history.

“We don’t even talk about that,” Weinstein said. “This is 2009 and this group of kids all they know is right now they’ve turned their season around and went through the conference undefeated. They are in the playoffs and they are excited and they will do the best that they can do.”