STARKVILLE — Chase Nicholson hopes for a better performance this week.
Given everything the Starkville Academy football coach has seen from his team this week, he feels confident that the Volunteers are building to a good performance.
Seventh-seeded Starkville Academy (7-3) will need one of its best efforts of the season at 7 tonight when it plays host to 10th-seeded Hartfield Academy (6-4) in the first round of the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools Class AAA playoffs.
The winner of tonight’s game will take on the winner of the game between second-seeded Adams County Christian Academy and 15th-seeded North Delta Academy next week. If ACCS wins, that game would be in Natchez. If North Delta Academy wins, the winner of the Starkville Academy-Hartfield Academy game would play host to a second-round playoff game.
Nicholson isn’t thinking that far ahead. Instead, he is focused on carrying over a strong week of practice that helped erase the feeling of a 14-12 victory against Winston Academy last week. Nicholson wasn’t pleased with how the Volunteers performed, so he called captains Dalton Dempsey, Torin Hamilton, Drew Jackson, and Carter Roach on Saturday morning and asked them for their help. He said the four seniors agreed the players needed to talk, so they gathered in a closed-door, players-only meeting Monday for 10 minutes.
“They are a really good group of seniors,” Nicholson said. “They want to be great leaders, and they have it in them. They had a moment, so we will see how it goes.”
Nicholson said the meeting was the first of its kind this season. He said he didn’t listen outside the door like a little brother, but he acknowledged he heard laughter and quiet before the meeting ended. He said he has a sense of what was said in the room after hearing some of his players say things like, “Today, all the joking ends. It gets real today.”
Nicholson said he has heard comments like that all week as the Volunteers have gotten better each day of the week. He said that has been the pattern the Volunteers have followed almost every week this season. The exception was last week, when he said Starkville Academy had “the greatest practice of the season” Monday practice to begin preparations for Winston Academy. He said the next two practices were “average” before the team regrouped Thursday, but he said the efforts earlier in the week translated to the field.
Judging from the way the players responded that day in practice and in the next three days, Nicholson is confident everyone is going to be motivated and ready to go for what should be a challenge in the first round.
“(The close loss to Winston Academy) could have been the best thing in the world for us because we really have played good football all year,” Nicholson said. “We really have not just played bad, and I thought Friday night we did not play well as a team.”
Nicholson said the proverbial light bulb clicked for his players and they understood they needed to look back on their history to realize steady improvement every day in practice leads to a strong effort on Friday nights. He is looking forward to seeing if the Volunteers can improve on their practice last Monday and deliver the best week of practices this season. He believes the Volunteers will produce that kind of effort because his players don’t want the season to end.
Hartfield Academy, which is coming off a 24-10 victory against Central Hinds last week, defeated Winston Academy 34-14 on Sept. 30.
“You don’t win a game on Friday,” Nicholson said. “We watch a lot of film. The guys watch a lot of film and do a lot of stuff on their own. They can see Hartfield Academy is a good team, but what they have done in the past doesn’t matter. What we have done in the past doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do Monday through Thursday to get us ready for Friday.
“(Assistant coach and defensive coordinator Brad) Butler has said it a bunch. When you go in Friday night and you know what you’re doing and you feel confident in what you’re doing, playing is a lot more fun. Monday through Thursday is where you gain your confidence to go in and play. They know what to do and how to play the game. It is all about mentally preparing and getting ready for the opponent this week. If we don’t, we’re done.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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