Why Are the Ms State Hs Championship at Usm Again
Story by Rick Cleveland, photos past Keith Warren
Let's accept a trip through the thrills, chills and spills of State Championship Weekend at The Rock in Hattiesburg, where the best of Mississippi high school football was on display.
Title dreams were both lived and dashed. Tears of both joy and despair were shed. Six country champions were crowned. Six gilded ball trophies were awarded — and earned. Every role player and jitney received a medal — and memories for life.
We'll go in the gild the games were played and brainstorm with the Jefferson Davis Canton Jaguars' 42-10 Class 3A championship victory over Amory. It was Jaguars coach Lance Mancuso's tape 9th straight country championship and the Jags' third in 5 years. Most of Mancuso's previous titles were won at Bassfield, which was consolidated with nearby Prentiss, to form the new high school five years ago.
Three things haven't inverse with the new schoolhouse. 1, they yet run the old, Fly-T crime. 2, they still run exceedingly fast. Three, they however have players named Booth. Demario Berth Jr. ran for 205 yards and iii touchdowns to atomic number 82 the way Friday.
"I'd like to take credit, merely information technology's actually all about these kids," Mancuso said, with grandchildren tugging at his pants legs. "I've been lucky enough to exist the head omnibus of nine astonishing football teams, and this group this year was no dissimilar. It's just a collection of swell kids and great players who deserve everything they've accomplished.
"I don't know why the good Lord has blessed me so."
Grade 1A, the division for Mississippi's smallest football-playing schools, oft produces the best championship games. It produced a doozy Fri afternoon when Bay Springs fired back from a 12-8 halftime arrears to defeat previously unbeaten Hollandale Simmons 32-12 with one of the smallest players on either team leading the manner.
In truth, neither Bay Springs, non Simmons, looked like your typical Course 1A team. Their rosters were bigger, and and so were their players. But Anthony Newell, who played quarterback and linebacker, showed at that place is still room in 1A football for a smaller guy with a huge center. The mite-sized Newell played offense and defense and special teams for the Bulldogs, who won the showtime state championship in school history.
Newell completed four of six passes and led the 'Dogs with 10 tackles. More importantly, he handed or pitched the ball 20 times to Anthony Ross, who rambled for 220 yards and 2 touchdowns and MVP honors.
Bay Springs has been in the playoffs countless times, been to the championship iii times, but had never won ane. "This championship is for all those teams that came shut to doing this in the past," said Bay Springs coach Dan Brady.
Brandon had won nine straight games. Madison Central had won seven direct. Something had to give in the Friday night boxing of Class 6A titans. Finally, in the fourth quarter of a back-forth-struggle, Madison Cardinal took reward of a Brandon fumble and clinched a 24-17 victory for its offset state championship in 22 years and just its 2nd in school history. The game was an instant classic.
"Information technology'south been a long time coming," Madison Central omnibus Toby Collums said. "More than anything I'k proud for these kids for finding a way to win a state championship, especially against a group that's equally good and as well-coached every bit Brandon."
Jaguars junior quarterback Jake Norris, who just three weeks ago was a reserve tight end, claimed MVP honors with a 178-1000 functioning that included a 79-yard touchdown pass and and then the winning two-chiliad, TD run in the quaternary quarter.
Norris became the Jags' quarterback when normal starter Vic Sutton suffered a torn ACL two weeks ago. Asked if he would have believed he would be the state championship MVP two weeks ago, Norris responded, "Not in a million years. I had one touchdown all flavour at tight stop. This is crazy … and crawly.
Senatobia's Hunter Mabry caught three touchdown passes in the 4A championship game. And he lost. Columbia won its offset state championship in 39 years, prevailing 22-21 when Senatobia missed a short field goal attempt in the terminal seconds.
Columbia's 6-foot-four-inch, 340-pound man child Jaheim Oatis, the state's most coveted recruit (committed to Alabama), was on brandish, simply his much smaller Wildcat teammate Kentrell Jackson made by far the game'southward biggest play tardily in the third quarter with Senatobia leading the game 21-14 and seemingly driving for another touchdown.
Jackson, a 165-pound broad receiver and defensive back, had other ideas. He stripped the ball away from a Senatobia runner, broke 3 or iv tackles, and so raced 81 yards for a touchdown, zigging and zagging all the way down the field.
Southern Miss coach Will Hall, watching from the finish zone, exclaimed, "Wow, that's the greatest play I've ever seen! That kid's last proper noun must be Payton!"
No, information technology was Jackson. "It was only going through my listen I had to make a play," Jackson would say afterwards. "Finally, I made information technology happen."
Yes, so Columbia went for two with Oatis, who primarily plays defense, lining up at left tackle. Naturally, running back Omar Johnson followed Oatis'due south push into the end zone for the winning 2-point conversion.
NFL legend Vince Lombardi once said, "Perfection is not attainable, only if we hunt perfection we tin can achieve excellence."
The Scott Central Rebels found both this season. Scott Central set the MHSAA championships scoring record in a 72-24 victory over Leflore County to cap a perfect xv-0 season. The Rebels were the lone public schoolhouse football team in Mississippi this season to finish the season undefeated.
Quez Goss, the team's xv-yr-one-time sophomore quarterback, might non have been perfect, just he was as shut as it gets. He ran for 103 yards and 2 touchdowns. He threw for 350 yards and vi touchdowns. That's eight touchdowns total, but he was non perfect. Vii of his 24 passes brutal incomplete.
Heed: Scott Central won its 5 playoff games by scores of 54-8, 54-25, 60-14, 60-14 again, and 72-24. That was afterward a regular season during which the Rebels averaged over 40 points per game.
Said Leflore Canton coach Eric Firm: "Scott Central was everything they were advertised to exist. They are a great football team. They have the all-time receivers we've seen all yr, and that quarterback is a special, special player."
As the final seconds ticked downwards in Picayune's 40-21 Land 5A Championship victory over W Signal, former Maroon Tide autobus Dodd Lee found his successor Cody Stogner on the sidelines. They shared a long, obviously meaningful embrace.
"That man has had the biggest influence of anyone in my life outside my father," Stogner would afterwards say. "He coached me, he hired me equally a coach and gave me a chance. He helped me supplant him here equally the bus. It's just a very special moment."
To win the title, Picayune had to vanquish the country's most successful football programme, eleven-time state champ West Signal and its ultra-successful coach Chris Chambless. Afterward, Stogner paid tribute to Chambless and Westward Bespeak. He said his goal at Lilliputian has been to emulate in south Mississippi what Chambless has achieved in the Golden Triangle.
"… I don't know how you wouldn't desire to mirror what those guys have been doing twelvemonth in and twelvemonth out. They show upwardly every game and play information technology the right way. That's why I'm so proud of my guys and what they accept accomplished."
Every bit Dodd'south teams once did, Stogner's Maroon Tide runs the somewhat old-fashioned Wing-T offense. They run it, run information technology, and and so run it some more. They ran it for 393 of their 414 yards of total offense. Indeed, they threw the brawl simply three times all dark.
Dante Dowdell ran it for 148 yards and two touchdowns. Chris Davis ran information technology for 139 yards and 2 more scores. Darnell Smith chipped in 88 yards and some other TD.
In many means, Little did mirror Due west Point's season-later on-season formula for success. That is, they blocked, tackled and executed to perfection — or at to the lowest degree something mighty close.
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Source: https://mississippitoday.org/2021/12/05/mississippi-state-championship-football/
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