REFORM, Ala. — The burden has been lifted from the shoulders of Eddie Doss.
For the past 26 years, Doss has lived with the ups and downs of the Pickens County High School football team. He has seen 0-10 and 3-7 seasons and has seen teams post double-digit wins in a season and advance to the postseason. All of those teams, though, have shared one thing: They never reached the state title game.
That changed Friday when Pickens County defeated Hubbertville 53-22 to advance to the Alabama High School Athletic Association Class 1A state title game. Pickens County (14-0) will get a chance to claim its first state championship at 3 p.m. today when it takes on Maplesville (14-0) at Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama.
Doss, who has volunteered his time to the football program for the past eight years, will be in Tuscaloosa, Ala., along with nearly all of the citizens from Reform and the surrounding area. Even though the school’s boys basketball teams won Class 2A and Class 1A state titles in 2010-12, the football team has come up short in recent years despite having teams loaded with talent. On Friday, led by senior quarterback Devonte Simon and senior running back Jermarcus Brown, the 2013 Tornadoes punched a ticket for all of their former players and all of their fans that was long overdue.
“I have seen the program reach just about its highest and its lowest,” said Doss, whose first cousin, LaJuan, is a former standout football and basketball player at Pickens County High, “and this is the ultimate. I get the feeling I thought I never would reach.”
Doss said he saw something different in the players’ eyes in the team’s first game of the season against Fayette. It’s not that past teams didn’t want to play for a state title, but he said the feeling he had in August made him believe the Tornadoes would be alive and kicking in December.
“I never thought we would get there,” Doss said. “We have been losing so many kids to different places, but i saw in these kids something I have never seen in the kids who have come through Pickens County High School. … They are going to do what it takes to win.”
Doss said parents have been taking their kids to South Lamar High, in Millport, Ala., and to Gordo High, which is just down the road from Pickens County High. He said it hurts because he knows a lot of the parents, and even played football with some of them. For a 1987 graduate of Pickens County High, the pain of seeing players leave the school runs has been soothed by a high-scoring 2013 squad that has scored 630 points and has energized a community and brought people back to the games, according to Doss.
Friday’s victory was especially sweet for Doss because he got a chance to hold the plaque the Tornadoes received for winning the state semifinal. In fact, Doss took the plaque home with him and slept with it. If you ask, he will proudly show you a picture of it on his cell phone.
Doss credits coach Patrick Plott, who is in his second stint at coach at the school, for elevating the football program to new heights. Today, he hopes to add another picture to his collection.
“It makes me feel good because I know the program is going in the right direction, not just this year but in the years to come,” said Doss, who played football for two years at Miles (Ala.) College before returning to Reform to help at Pickens County High. “Coach Plott is something special. When coach Plott left the program three years ago, it started to go down. He has brought that program all the way back.
“What he says, he means and the boys know that and the boys give 100 percent for coach Plott and will do anything it takes for him. You have got to have a man who lives that life to those kids, and they see that every day. He will go out of his way to help any boy on that football team. He doesn’t care who you are. That is what I love about him. He is offensive genius.
“It is going to be crazy (today) because this is the first time Pickens County has ever gotten to the state championship. Everybody associated with Pickens County High School is going to be there pulling for us. It is going to be amazing to walk into that stadium and to look up there and to see everybody I have played with and played against and guys I have coached come back and pull for you to do something that is going to be great.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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