MACON — Tyrone Shorter knew what kind of team he had.
For every dropped interception, fumble, busted coverage, or miscommunication he witnessed by his players, the Noxubee County High School football coach had to temper his frustration and realize he had a team capable of getting to Oxford and winning back-to-back Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 4A state titles.
A lot of Shorter’s frustration came to a head during a four-game losing streak — the program’s first since 2006 — that tested his patience and saw four players quit the team.
Faced with the prospect of seeing the losing streak stretch to five in its Class 4A, Region 4 opener against Kosciusko, Shorter had enough. Following an uncharacteristically rough practice in which he said the Tigers were going after each other — even their quarterback, Shorter sent his players home. When they returned the next day, he told them again to go home and then encouraged some of his senior leaders to get the team straightened out.
“If you are fighting among each other and separating each other, the whole team is going to go down,” Shorter said he told seniors Bobby May, Jeffery Simmons, Timorrius Conner, Quincy Stokes, and Ladaveon Smith. “My attitude was I wasn’t going to let one guy spoil it for everybody. I challenged them to pull it together.”
Months later, Shorter can reflect on what proved to be a turning point that helped Noxubee County reverse course and get back on track. At 3 p.m. Saturday, Noxubee County (11-4) will try to close a season-ending 10-game winning streak with a victory against St. Stanislaus (11-3) in the Class 4A state title game at Ole Miss’ Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford.
“This football season as a head coach has been the most difficult season for me because of the challenge I had to keep this group together,” Shorter said “It seemed like to me that everybody wasn’t on the same page. It was like there was a little envy. Then the losses started coming. I could sense the team started separating.”
Noxubee County defeated St. Stanislaus 48-27 to win the Class 4A crown in 2014 at Mississippi State’s Davis Wade Stadium. With eight returning starters on offense and dominating players like Simmons and linebacker Quendarrion Barnett on defense, Shorter believed his team had the pieces to make a run at the school’s fourth championship, and its first back-to-back titles.
Victories against Class 6A Starkville and Columbus started the season on a strong note. But losses to Aledo High (Texas), Meridian, West Point, and Kemper County erased that momentum and caused doubt to creep into the Tigers’ minds. In a community accustomed to seeing its football team have success, talk started around town that the Tigers weren’t up for another title run.
Shorter heard the talk and cautioned his players not to allow it into the locker room. But injuries and inconsistency helped stir the adversity and made it even more difficult to combat. A loss to Class 3A Kemper County might have been the bitterest pill, which might explain why the frustration apparently boiled over the week after that game.
On the Wednesday after the Kemper County game — two days before Noxubee County was set to face Kosciusko — Shorter couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched his players “about to kill each other” on a day when the team typically went through a “competition” practice that put the first-team offense against the first-team defense.
The agitation continued when the players returned to the locker room. Shorter said he responded to all of the arguing by his players by sending everybody home.
It wasn’t a peaceful send-off, either. Shorter said he “went off” and told his players they “weren’t a team” and that they were letting outside influences get in the way. The next day, Shorter told the players to go home again. That’s when the seniors met with the rest of the team. Shorter met with the players following that meeting and told them they were going to change and he wasn’t changing. He encouraged anyone who didn’t want to be a part of the team to leave.
“When we came back, they came with a different attitude,” Shorter said. “We got them all in together and we kept talking to them about how it was a test and that they had to keep the faith. We told them we still have a great football team (and that) we are just going through some adversity. I told them to trust me that we are going to get back on track and we were going to win it all. I kept telling them that. Believe in me. Believe in this coaching staff.”
A 22-12 victory against Kosciusko started Noxubee County on its way to another Region 4 crown. Four more victories pushed the Tigers’ winning streak to 21 in region games.
Noxubee County has continued its march in the playoffs with victories against Amory, Lafayette County, Houston, and Greenwood. A return to health helped Noxubee County play with its trademark aggressiveness and speed on defense. The offense finally started to click at a high rate, too, in victories against Caledonia in he regular season and Houston in the playoffs.
While all of the problems haven’t been solved, Noxubee County is feeling better about itself. Shorter knows the Tigers have grown stronger because of everything they have experienced. Even though it has been frustrating, Shorter knows all his players learned valuable lessons he feels will help them complete the journey Saturday.
“I try to explain to them football can teach you a lot because there are times I feel like quitting sometimes, not the team, just different things that come along,” Shorter said. “What is quitting going to solve? There always is going to be adversity in your life. What makes you a man is finding a way to overcome that adversity. It is so easy to give up. It is so easy to quit. That is the coward’s way out.
“I just kept talking to them and believing in them and the team. They kept believing in the coaching staff. It only took one win after those four losses. Once we got that one win against a very good Kosciusko team, I saw the difference. They started back having fun, and now we have won nine straight to get to the state title game.”
“Once we got all of that stuff out of the way, it has been a really, really close-knit group like it was at the beginning of the season,” Shorter said. “I think the kids weren’t used to losing. Then you go on a four-game losing streak. I think everybody started losing their mind, players, everybody. It was my job to keep this team together. I just thank God and thank God for giving me the strength to keep it together. We did that, and here we are. I feel good about our chances on Saturday.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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