STARKVILLE — Last year, when Starkville Academy opened its season with a 34-13 home loss to Lamar School, coach Chase Nicholson said the defeat let the Volunteers know right off the bat where they were coming up short.
“They kind of set the measuring stick for us,” Nicholson said.
By the time the Vols came back to beat Lamar 24-22 in the MAIS Class 5A quarterfinals, Starkville Academy knew it had improved a lot.
And this year, the Vols start off once again by playing the Raiders, facing them at 7 p.m. Friday in Meridian.
“It’s going to be a tough game,” junior outside linebacker Bo Carter said. “They’re going to be good.”
Indeed, coach Mac Barnes’ Raiders won three state titles in a row before Starkville Academy ousted them in 2019, so Nicholson knows what Friday’s contest will bring.
“Lamar is always going to field a great team,” he said. “We know that.”
Nicholson said Lamar has an effective run game led by returning back Daulton Nelson and that the Raiders throw the ball a lot. According to Carter, Lamar lost one of its top wide receivers but returned wideout Hayden Farrar along with two superbacks and most of its offensive line.
All that talent means Nicholson knows how important a road victory Friday would be for his team.
“It’s a great game year in and year out for us,” he said. “They’re a fun bunch to play against.”
Oak Hill Academy at Benton Academy
Fifteen years ago, coaching at Houston High School, Bill Rosenthal first met Kenny Burton, then a coach at nearby Shannon.
Now, the two coaches — each in charge of a team — will meet again Friday in unfamiliar territory.
Rosenthal, Oak Hill’s first-year head coach, was in sore need of a contest when the Mississippi High School Activities Association delayed fall sports by two weeks, wiping out the Raiders’ contests with Mantachie on Friday and Tupelo Christian Prep on Aug. 28. So he called Burton, the head coach at Benton Academy, to set up a season opener on Friday in Benton.
The two schools, Rosenthal said, are perhaps as similar as their coaches. Both teams play in the MAIS Class 3A division. Both are called the Raiders. Both had losing records last year. Both fared about the same in losses to Carroll Academy, Winona Christian and Central Holmes Christian.
Benton, however, already has a win in its 2020 ledger, beating Porter’s Chapel Academy 46-12 in a “Week Zero” contest. Rosenthal said he expects to see a well-coached team that can force turnover after turnover without giving the ball away much itself.
Benton, Rosenthal said, won’t get beaten deep, forcing opponents to catch short passes and drive the ball methodically down the field.
“We’ll have to be patient, take our five or six yards here and there and hope somebody breaks a tackle and can make a big play,” Rosenthal said.
On the other side of the ball, Rosenthal is wary of Benton’s quarterback, who ran for 193 yards and passed for 150 more in the win over Porter’s Chapel.
“We know we’ve got to stop him to have a chance to be successful,” Rosenthal said.
Overall, though, the coach said Oak Hill is looking forward to its first game of the season Friday.
“I think it’ll be a good test for our kids,” Rosenthal said. “They’re ready to hit somebody besides each other.”
Hebron Christian at Marvell Academy (Ark.)
Hebron Christian School coach David Foster acknowledges there aren’t many easy wins on the Eagles’ 2020 schedule.
That’s just how he likes it.
“You can find out a lot more against a really good team than you can against a team that might not be,” Foster said.
Hebron will begin that discovery process Friday with a road game at Marvell Academy (Arkansas), the second-best team in the MAIS Class 2A division last year. Marvell went 11-2 last season, routing Columbus Christian Academy in the semifinals before losing to Manchester Academy in the state championship.
“It’ll be a tough challenge,” Foster said. “They’re pretty good year in and year out.”
Foster, in his 16th year with the Hebron football program in some capacity, said he recalled the times when his Eagles were just as talented. But in recent years, Marvell has remained a winning program while Hebron has been on the downswing.
“We’ll find out as the season unfolds just how good of a team we are,” said Foster, whose team went 2-9 in 2019.
That first game Friday will go a long way towards showing it, as Foster said he hopes Hebron’s bevy of seniors — comprising around half of the school’s 16-player roster — can use their experience to their benefit against a younger, albeit more talented, Marvell team.
Hebron has faced Marvell plenty before — including a 42-8 season-opening loss in Pheba last year — and Foster hopes Friday’s game will skew toward some of the more positive outcomes of the past.
“It hasn’t turned out real well sometimes, and once or twice it’s turned out pretty good,” he said.
Pickens Academy (Ala.) vs. Banks Academy (Ala.) at Briarwood Christian (Ala.)
The Pickens Academy (Alabama) football team went into last season expecting to win its first game, but when the Pirates lost, it sort of killed the optimism within the program. Pickens lost its next two games and struggled to a 2-9 record.
So this season, second-year coach Scotty Pennington knows a victory in Friday’s game against Banks Academy in Birmingham is critical.
“A win right here would be great,” Pennington said. “That would help boost confidence big time.”
The Pirates are technically on the road, but they’ll be playing in a quasi-home environment: Banks doesn’t have a field of its own, so the game will be held at Briarwood Christian School. Additionally, Banks’ blue uniforms have yet to come in, so the Pirates get to don their home jerseys for Friday’s game.
It’s not the only advantage Pickens Academy will have against Banks, which started playing football just last year — in the eight-man Christian Football Association. This year, the Jets will play in Class AA of the Alabama Independent School Association (Pickens is in Class A.)
“It’s kind of hard to tell how somebody’s going to do in 11-man football,” Pennington said, pointing to the different strategies that come with adding three players to each side. “I think it’s going to be an advantage for us with them still trying to get in the groove of things.”
The coach said he was worried when the COVID-19 pandemic limited the time the Pirates had to install their new “flex-bone” option offense, but his players made up for the late start.
“The guys really stepped it up,” Pennington said. “They’re a lot further than I thought they’d be.”
Other games
Columbus Christian Academy at Humphreys Academy
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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