What’s changed from last season to this one for the Victory Christian Academy football team?
“Well, we’re not constantly arguing with each other, for one,” senior end Ethan Clark said.
The Eagles’ 2021 campaign was filled with disagreements, players at odds with each other and general discontent inside the locker room.
“It wasn’t really arguing, but you’d joke, and it would lead to something,” senior linebacker Zac Carr said. “Someone would get mad, and he’d hit you. Really, it just wasn’t a bond you should have. They’d come out here and try to kill each other and not work together.”
Consequently, Victory’s 2021 season featured, well, not much victory. The Eagles went 1-6, giving up more than 50 points per game in the eight-man Christian Football Association while scoring less than 24 themselves.
And it took some of those lopsided losses for the Eagles to fix their attitude problem.
“Really, it started to change when they realized, ‘All we come out here to do is get our butts whooped,’” Carr said.
In 2022, Victory hopes to have assembled a roster not only capable of avoiding those embarrassing defeats but perhaps dishing out some of its own.
The Eagles bumped up their roster size to 20 players after having just 12 in 2021, making it impossible to practice with its full offense and defense on the field.
“This year, we’ve got a good group of guys, and we actually have numbers for both sides of the field,” head coach Andrew Pace said. “It can help tremendously. Being able to put in fresh legs and fresh players makes a huge difference compared to playing Iron Man football and not leaving the field.”
Pace has seen that in roughly a decade as an assistant for the Eagles. This year is his first as head coach, replacing Chris Hamm, who led Victory since the inception of the football program in 1994.
Pace said he and Hamm first discussed the leadership change at the end of the past school year in May. In early July, the move became official.
Pace said he still calls Hamm a lot for advice as he adjusts to the new position.
“I’ve got some big shoes to fill,” Pace said. “The play-calling and stuff and designing plays is what’s really been the most difficult part, but it’s been fun.”
He said Victory won’t change much — but the Eagles might add a few new looks — in his first season in charge. What Pace has shown his players so far has gone over well with them.
“This year, they’re actually looking really good,” Pace said. “We are young, but we have some really eager boys ready to play. They’ve done really well so far in learning what we have to teach them. I think they’re going to be a really good team this year.”
Pace was on staff when Victory compiled a 10-1 season in 2014, avenging a loss to Tuscaloosa Christian to win the CFA title. The Eagles’ unity and team chemistry then, he said, were unmatched.
So far, his 2022 squad seems eerily similar.
Maybe that’s due to the longstanding relationships among the players, particularly among the players who have been at the school the longest.
Clark, Carr, Matthew Davis, Emmett Newman, Jeremiah Smith and transfer Gabriel McCarty are the Eagles’ six seniors in 2022, and most of them have known each other a long time.
“We’ve worked together, started working out and growing together,” Carr said. “We’ve all been pretty close throughout the years. We all know each other and try our best to get along and come out here and get the job done.”
Slightly over two weeks prior to the Aug. 26 season opener against Unity Christian Academy, Victory is in a strong place — although not the place the Eagles want to be.
“As of right now, we’re not ready ready, but we’re more ready than most people should be,” Carr said. “But we have a lot more to work on.”
How much the Eagles can improve will determine how far they go.
But Clark knows one thing for sure.
“We’re definitely a lot better than we were last year — 100 percent,” he said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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