The gauntlet is down to six.
But that doesn’t mean the job of Heritage Academy football coach Barrett Donahoe and the Patriots will be any easier. In fact, things might get tougher for the Patriots as they hit the halfway mark in their season.
That’s why Donahoe knows he, his coaches, and his players need to bring intensity and focus every day at practice to help the team prepare to the best of its ability for each challenge that awaits. The next one will come at 7 p.m. Friday when Heritage Academy (4-2) travels to Greenville to take on Washington School (4-1).
“We feel like if we stay healthy and we continue to progress that we have a chance when we hit this stretch to be successful, but it is going to be tough,” Donahoe said. “These are six very good football teams that we will play. They are physical football teams that will be well coached and have good athletes. It is going to be a tough stretch.”
Coming off a 31-0 victory against Oak Hill Academy on Friday night, Donahoe feels his team is progressing nicely toward a goal of advancing to the playoffs for a third-straight year. To do that, Heritage Academy will have to navigate a minefield of playoff contenders in Division I and II in Class AAA of the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools. Following its game Friday at Washington School, Heritage Academy will play host to Pillow Academy, which played into the fourth quarter against Jackson Academy before losing 22-3. Games against Leake Academy, Starkville Academy, Magnolia Heights, and Madison-Ridgeland Academy round out a schedule that offers no respites.
“I wish we played Jackson Academy late on the season this year because I feel late in the season after getting more experience that that is a game we could win,” Donahoe said. “I feel like we caught them at a bad time. … I don’t know if there is a team in the state of Mississippi, including Jackson Prep, MRA (Madison-Ridgeland Academy), and JA, that is as good as Starkville Academy right now. They’re playing great football. The limited amount that I have seen them, they are as fundamentally sound as they can be. Pillow Academy is playing very good football. They beat a good MRA team. They weren’t able to take JA the other night, but they played with them into the fourth quarter. Magnolia Heights, before they had a key injury on the team, might have been the best team in the state.
“You have teams in Division II, AAA North that are as good as anybody in the state of Mississippi. We feel like we are as good as those teams. We know where our holes are and what are challenges are, but we feel Division II North is as strong as it has ever been, and it is as string from top to bottom that it has ever been. There are four teams in Division II North that are fighting for two playoff spots.”
As daunting as the run of six games appears, Heritage Academy showed balance and confidence on offense against Oak Hill Academy. Junior quarterback Dylan Barker was 7 of 15 for 176 yards and a touchdown. Senior running back Cayden Upton ran for two touchdowns, while junior running back Michael Ledbetter caught a touchdown pass, ran for a touchdown, and kicked a 31-yard field goal.
Donahoe said that effort reflected a maturation based on another game’s worth of experience. With such a young team, Donahoe said he and his coaches placed a lot of emphasis on that game because they felt it could affect the course of the team’s season. He hopes the resounding nature of the victory will give the Patriots even more confidence and drive them to want to get even better for a difficult upcoming stretch.
“It was good to see our guys play with the intensity level that they played with, but our guys have to understand — and we have been upfront with them as a coaching staff — that they have to keep that intensity each week,” Donahoe said. “If we don’t play with intensity and aren’t very prepared in all three phases of our game and if we aren’t mentally focused at practice and we have a bad week of practice, a bad week of practice over the next six weeks could equal a very long Friday night. We have to continue to be focused as a coaching staff to work as hard as we can to give our guys the opportunity to be successful.”
Donahoe feels there might be something to the fact that his team’s inexperience will work in its favor in that the Patriots don’t know any better to play with intensity every day in practice and each week, regardless of past accomplishments and the opponent. Donahoe said the might be a part of the team’s mind-set that doesn’t grasp what it has accomplished and how much it has progressed from the season-opening loss to Caledonia. His job is to ensure the players maintain that drive to improve to see if they can improve as much in the final six weeks as they have in the first six weeks.
“We’re not naive enough as coaches to believe we’re going to get the best effort out of our guys every ay, but what we ask them to do is to push through those bad days, to push through the times when the intensity level is not high, for leaders to step up on the field at practice or in the game and to demand that their teammates give them more so we can have success at practice,” Donahoe said. “We hope when we get to those weeks that are so important that we’re playing with the most confidence and the highest skill level that we have played with all season. I feel where we are today as opposed to where we were when we took the field against Caledonia, we have improved vastly. … If we can get the same type of improvement over the next six weeks that we saw the first six weeks, we will have a chance to be a playoff team.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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