Coming off of an extremely physical 10-0 loss to Columbus, the New Hope High School football team could have used a bit of a breather this week. 

Instead, the Trojans get West Point.

“West Point’s not the kind of team you want to ever play,” New Hope coach Seth Stillman said. “I told our kids all week I think we play in one of the top two hardest districts in the state regardless of classification.”

The hard-hitting loss sent a very clear message to the Trojans coaches.

“We’ve got to raise our intensity and raise our physicality on the offensive side,” Stillman said. “Because if we don’t, I know how their defense plays. If we don’t rise to the occasion, and raise our physicality, they’re going to live in the backfield.”

Another key, Stillman said, was limiting West Point’s possessions. If you make three stops, and they only have six possessions, that’s 21 points and you’re right in it, he explained. But if they have 11 possessions and you get three stops, “it’s 56-7.”

When the Trojans (2-1, 0-1 Class 5A-1) make the short trip to West Point to face the Green Wave (2-2, 1-0), they will be facing a team that has a long history of preaching much of the same message Stillman is working to instill in them.

“We just play hard, get all 11 guys to the ball and tackle well,” West Point coach Chris Chambless said. “That’s the basis of playing good defensive ball: You need to tackle well, you need to hustle, you need to fly to the ball.”

His players seem to be listening. The Green Wave are unbeaten on the field, taking care of business against Noxubee County (38-19) and Lafayette (17-0).

“Everybody we have is playing up to our expectations,” Chambless said.

And Stillman knows as well as anyone what the expectations are at West Point, which owns a 24-3 edge in the series against New Hope, including 2-0 when Stillman was the Trojans’ defensive coordinator..

But the first-year head coach’s intimate knowledge of the series goes back further. It includes two games as a New Hope senior in 2009, when the Trojans went 11-2 with both losses, 35-8 during the regular season and 41-21 in the Class 5A semifinals, coming against the Green Wave. 

Stillman even was on the losing side in the series when he wasn’t on the New Hope sideline. He was a first-year assistant coach at West Point in 2014 when the Trojans finished 10-3, beating the Green Wave 20-15 along the way. These days, Stillman can joke about how losing to the Green Wave in high school as a player and then losing to the Trojans as a Green Wave coach had him rethinking his choice of career.

Then, as New Hope’s defensive coordinator, Stillman was on the wrong end of 49-3 and 41-0 beatdowns the past two years. But it’s more than the head-to-head domination.

The Green Wave own 11 state titles; the Trojans have none. The Green Wave are 17-time district champions; the Trojans won one, in 1985. The Green Wave have 18 10-win seasons; the Trojans have had two.

But Chambless sees a Trojans team that is clearly better than the one they crushed in the past two meetings.

“They’re much improved,” the 16-year head coach said. “They’ve got an offensive scheme that fits the personnel that they have, and they play extremely hard on defense. They run to the ball, make things happen. It’s going to be a tough challenge for us.”

Convincing his players to take a team seriously despite their domination over the years won’t be a problem.

“We have the mindset that our next opponent is going to be the toughest game we play all year,” Chambless said. “That’s kind of what we preach to them.”

Meanwhile, the Trojans know full well the challenge they will face Friday night, but it remains business as usual on the practice field. 

“We work on the same things every week,” Stillman said. “We’re going to be intense, we’re going to play fast, we’re going to play physical, we’re going to be aggressive. Those are things we work on every single week, and that’s what West Point is.”

West Point also is a program that won four consecutive state titles from 2016 to 2019 and played for the 2020 championship.

“What you see on Friday night isn’t just a switch that’s being flipped,” Stillman said. “That’s what happens on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and you better be careful in holding back on Thursday because they’ll get after it in shorts and T-shirts, too.”

With an opponent like that, motivation isn’t much of an issue.

“I’m not going to say it’s hard to get your kids up for West Point,” Stillman said. “Our kids understand, and they know, they live here, they see the paper every year when they play for state championships and win state championships. 

“But our mindset is changing here. We don’t have any guys that look like they’re going to catch the Green Wave flu this week. I think they’re ready.”