STEENS — The five seniors on Columbus Christian Academy’s football team can’t believe it.
Their final regular season with the Rams is over, although they feel like it just began.
“We can’t believe this came this fast,” quarterback Dakota Shaw said. “It’s crazy how time flies.”
Shaw has been at Columbus Christian since his K-4 days, and so have classmates Tanner Dolan, Will Teague and Lawson Studdard. They played football and park league baseball in elementary school, and they’ve basically never stopped playing sports together — and not just football. Shaw plays basketball and baseball and runs track; Dolan, Teague and Studdard all play other sports as well.
“We’ve been together since I can remember, so we play good together,” Shaw said. “We just kind of click.”
So as the Rams prepare for their home playoff matchup on Nov. 8, Shaw and his friends still hope to end their last ride on the football field the way they want it.
“I’d really like to get a ring,” Shaw said. “I just hope we all come together as a team and play.”
Playing as a team has seemingly been easy for the Rams, who moved to the MAIS Eight-Man classification this year. They’ve got just 16 players, first-year coach Jason Williams said, but each one was pivotal in getting them to an 8-2 record and a district title.
“It’s about every player from one to 16,” Williams said. “It’s about every coach and everybody that’s helped along the way. That’s why we’re successful — because of everybody’s hard work.”
With Teague and Studdard on the outside and fellow senior Bryar Kemp at running back, Shaw does have plenty of help, but he’s been a leader for the Rams at quarterback and at linebacker.
Williams said Shaw and his other seniors have been instrumental in improving Columbus Christian’s perception when the Rams huddle before a snap. They pick up more from how an opponent might line up, and that can only help.
“I know that talk in the huddle has changed a lot from this to, Hey, coach, I’m seeing this; I’m also seeing this,” Williams said. “You hear that from Dakota, and you also hear that from other experienced players, and that helps. … It’s helped us on both offense and defense.”
Communication and devotion at practice were key in one-score home wins against Delta Academy and Kemper Academy in back-to-back weeks, Williams said.
“They bought into the fact that we’re gonna play as a team and play hard and play with a lot of intensity, and that’s what sort of carried us through some of the close games,” he said. “You don’t always start out a game hitting your stride or doing everything right. You’re gonna make some mistakes. We’ve put enough work into it where the kids have adapted and overcome, and we’ve won some close games because of their hard work.”
But the Rams won their other six games by a margin of least two touchdowns, including a 40-24 win over Hebron on Oct. 18 that clinched a district title.
“It was a big game, just to know you were undefeated in the district with no tiebreakers, nothing like that coming into play,” Williams said. “You won it outright.”
The victory gave the Rams a bye week before facing the winner of Friday’s game between Sharkey-Issaquena Academy and Riverdale Academy.
“We gotta concentrate on whoever wins this first-round game and just take it one day at a time,” Williams said. “We’ll have a formidable opponent opponent next week that we’ll have to play well to beat, and that’s what we plan on doing.”
Though Marvell Academy and Manchester Academy loom for future playoff rounds, Williams said those possible contests are “down the road,” and the Rams can’t waste time worrying about them.
“It’s just one step at a time,” Williams said. “You get by that step, survive and advance.”
All Columbus Christian can do is prepare as hard as it can for next Friday’s game, the first step on the road to the goals the Rams’ seniors still have. The best season of their high school careers is nearly over, but they’ve still got the chance to write a perfect ending to it.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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