High expectations for Arkansas high school football in 2024 | THV11+

We had some turmoil in the off season. Um We lost some players but, you know, the next man up mentality, next man up mentality will certainly be the team motto this season for C AC. Last year, the Mustangs raced to New Heights under first year head coach Ryan Howard C AC even captured its most wins since 2015. But in January, Howard left the program and with it, a slew of players transferred to other schools. We, we're not mad at them. I mean, they, they did what they did. Oh, well, you know, we're moving on and moving on. They did to the man you've just heard from new head coach JD Plumlee. Them getting to know me and, and, and me getting to know them and, you know, we're, you know, we're kind of doing something a little bit different here than they've done in the past. Very honest. He's very honest. Yeah, he'll tell you what you're doing wrong. He'll tell you what you're doing. Right. Plumlee comes from success after winning the four A state title with Malvern in 2022. But two years later, he's got a tough challenge ahead. You know, our depth is gonna be our biggest issue. But, you know, we kind of a little chip on our shoulder and as many players that did choose to leave, some still wanted to stay, why I love it here. I wouldn't rather be anywhere else. I mean, I love these guys, love our coaches. They've always been here for us leaving was never an option for me. I love playing with these guys. That's a big reason why I chose to play again this year. We're the ones. It's our time. They didn't wanna be a part of it. You know, we'll shake their hands, tell them good luck and we'll see you somewhere else. But here this is our time. It's, it's us or you're not a part of this. It's the mustangs that want to be a mustang. His name holds pretty great weight out here. So, and he's a great coach. So he's gonna, he's gonna get us right. The man tied end, Savion Slater is talking about is Darryl Patton largely known for his immense success with Fayetteville from 2003 to 15. Patton was named head coach of Whitehall in the off season and on Friday night, he'll begin his 20 seventh straight season as a head coach in Arkansas. I, I'm not changed. I'm the same person. I was as far as coach at Bryant years ago in Fayetteville and box site in Southwest. I mean, that's all I know. That's the only way I know to do things, I'm still, still trying to earn their trust and, and there's, and some of them are still, I'm trying to get their trust from them and vice versa. So it's a process, it doesn't happen overnight. And while trust can only be built over time, Patton certainly has the respect of his team. You know, he's coaching multiple NFL players, you know, he's won multiple state championships. So it's great to have a coach that has such a great legacy, has a great history. No, how to win and knows what it takes to win to be coaching us and speaking of winning, that hasn't exactly been an easy thing lately for the Bulldogs after back to back four win seasons, this year's team doesn't wanna just be different. They want to be disciplined. There was so many games where we came up a yard short, coming more disciplined and seeing that just, uh, it just a inch would cause you to lose the game, I believe will be more disciplined this year because we've seen what the consequences are when you're not disciplined and that hurt us, you know, hurt us bad. So we know what we need to come out here and do every single night and we're gonna make sure we get that done while Cabot has had some great seasons. The past few years. It's consistently come up just short in the state playoffs yet in 2024 their ultimate goal hasn't wavered. Oh, we went to state that's expectation, state champions. This is our goal. Every team in Arkansas right now. Their, their goal, a state championship and our expectations are really high. Why? The high expectations? Well, it could be because of the return of quarterback Maddox mccrory in last year's season opener, mccrory threw for three touchdowns but the very next game he was injured and sidelined for the rest of the regular season. But in 2024 he'll return for his junior season. Having Maddox healthy or ready to go is important. He, he gives us a real threat in the past game. Uh He's sharp and makes good decisions. Can't wait to see him play. Mccrory will also return with Keegan Vest by his side who rushed for over 1000 yards last season, Vest. Now a senior alongside Brett Jay, both see their leadership roles as crucial. You gotta help them make sure they're learning the playbooks and stuff and just encourage them, just be a great teammate. It's a little bit more pressure out there because, you know, if you lose, it's gonna kind of go on you and who the leader of the defense is. So it's just coming to practice every day and like showing everybody this is how you do things, they understand the concept of team. You know, it's what you go do with your opportunity and we have an opportunity in front of us. That opportunity for the Panthers will begin next Friday night when Fayetteville, the defending Champs come to town. It is what it is in the past. You can't dwell on it, but you gotta learn from it. The message is consistent. Uh, you get everything you learn from it. Try to apply to this year and try to make it better. We're gonna do have a way better season. Try not to think too much on it. We learn from what we need to learn from now. It's time to move on a team focused on what's ahead, not behind a couple more weeks and we trying to get these to be back on the field a couple of weeks away and I started, I can't sleep. It's year two for Jason who leading his alma mater. This is my home school. So it's more important to me than, than any part of the coaching job I've had so far in my career and year two, moving from a tradition of the Flex Bone to a more modern offense. It was all new to him last year, how to run routes, how to line up, things like that. So, you know, having that whole year and having this off season to work and I really think that it's gonna, it's, it's really gonna help us going into the season. We're going places baby, come on. So with those first year stumbles, hopefully out of the way the Bears build to the future, you know, let's, let's get better this year, let's improve. Let's, let's go to make the playoffs and I have the best year we can. This isn't the North Little Rock Way, you know, last year, uh, we got a lot of pride and tradition on being really good and competing each and every year and we're just going through a slump right now. Top 20 in Arkansas all time wins. North Little Rock is no longer the powerhouse they used to be and last year wasn't exactly a season to remember. A lot of times. It's like we all wouldn't be on board. Half of us would be on, half of us be off. The charging Wildcats scraped together just three wins making it their worst season in nearly two decades. And in the off season, a lot of things changed. We lost 26 seniors to graduation. We've lost 14 seniors to be to the transfer portal, but like many teams, the page now turns to 2024. It's a new group, like we got a brand new group of kids. You can't really worry about last year. Uh You just gotta worry about what we're gonna do this year. And for this year, the seniors who did stick around say this season will be different, different, different culture, different brotherhood, our brotherhood is way tighter than what it was last year. Like we had a lot of transfers. So like, you know, it's a few of us seniors, but we got a lot of young guys and, but I feel like this year we really are getting on board with each other. Like we are coming in and coming as one. It's, it's up to us to, you know, keep coaching them up and keep them on board with us. They're not, not doing it for me. You're not doing it for a coach, but they're doing it for each other. Uh, and that's, that's what we're trying to get to and for the charging Wildcats. Now that the team seems to be bonding, it's time to go out and win while the zebras had a phenomenal season in 2023. They came up just short in the five, a semi finals. Now, players and coaches agree they've learned their lesson and are ready for 2024. I get too highs on the highs. Don't get too lows on the lows. Don't get too high on the highs and lows on the lows. Don't celebrate too early. Never think you won too soon. A common theme from last season for the zebras. It's not over till it's over in the semifinals last year. Pine Bluff led Shiloh Christian at the half, 35 to 19 in halftime and took a deep breath and we was excited, but they learned that a until the last whistleblower, the game's never over and the game wasn't over in the second half. The Saints stormed back to beat the zebras. But 2024 turns to a new chapter one without sec playmakers like Courtney Field and Austin Dendy, you know, you're gonna lose athletes every year. But in the process, you're growing athletes while those athletes are getting, getting ready to get out and while it'll be challenging with the absence of that loaded senior class from last year, the senior class from this year, it's just fine with that. Nobody really know about us now about like who's the next star and you know what's next? So I feel like the first few games when we come out and we show that we still have players that can make big plays and, you know, be stars that we're gonna shock a lot of people this year. Like I kinda said before, we kinda underdogs to most people. So I say we got more to prove and what makes us different. I feel like we got a chip on our shoulder that's gonna make us play harder. We're past the point of changing the culture. You know, it's not about change, it's about building what third year head coach Brian Mappin is building at Monell is something to be applauded after winning just three games his first season last year, the Hornets captured seven wins before ending their season in the first round of the playoffs. We got a really good symbiotic relationship with last season right now. We're proud of the turnaround and what accomplished, but we're also uh hungry because we got a taste, but we didn't get to finish the meal. So for us, it's just really motivating to know, hey, we can, we belong there. But then now let's take that step further and let's keep it going with an influx of transfers and young guys, the Hornets sure seem like they could get over the hump this season. But what really makes this year's team different. It's a group of guys, a group of brothers that love each other and they're gonna go to war for each other. We, we want this together and we want it for each other. We're starting to kinda dial in with a, we over me mindset instead of us just playing as our for ourselves and for one, doing it as a unit as a team and for this team, their expectations are pretty high. I mean, we're a championship or bust around here, you know, I mean, when I got this job, that was the mindset these kids want to win. I have no doubt that we're gonna go out here and dominate every game. So kind of showing up every game and, you know, preparing the same way. Pretty much. We're the best team and we know we could do it, we know it could win state. We know we're better than any team that lines up across from us. Like I like to believe the only team in the state that could beat us is us. Hornets that are buzzing with confidence and next week doesn't just bring us the start of Arkansas football. It's also zero week. The official start to the high school football season. Every team in the state wants to end up in the same place. War Memorial stadium. So it's fitting that little rock park view calls War Memorial home during the regular season as well since the Patriots have now ended the last two years as state champions and now look primed to make it three in a row. Uh, when you walk into this building here, uh, no one, no one expects to lose. There's no higher standard in Arkansas than at little Rock Park view where the Patriots are riding a state high 25 game winning streak. Parkview was so dominant last year that they played 12 of their 14 games with a running clock in the second half. Brother, we work in it every day and, and, uh, the best athletes in the state and you can't do nothing to get better on and that's the focus, getting better, not resting on their laws. That's the past, let's say 2022 2023 2024. That's in the past, um, championship we won, that's in the past. It's a whole new team. We gotta do this ourselves. It's a whole new group. Many of the big names return, including multiple division one recruits, the Patriots are breaking in several new starters in the offensive line. But that's where those blowout wins last year can really help this year. In the past, I've had some, some good depth but not to the level that we are now. And I think that has to do with winning those guys playing 12 out of the 14 games, a whole half of high school football that really helped them. Parkview also makes a change at quarterback with Joe T Robinson transfer, Quentin Murphy taking the ranks bigger and stronger and more and faster, which is scary because he can run, but he's gotten a lot better with his mechanics and throwing. But I feel like as Quintin is, he's a great quarterback and I feel like he's gonna make great plays this year. He's gonna lead us as a team. We, we're all gonna stay together. We're gonna, we're gonna root for him, but the guys who've been there before the senior class will help keep complacency from setting in. The big thing that we've seen from them is, is just not letting the team be on cruise control gonna be big on our seniors this year because we gotta bring our team up. We gotta stay together and we got control as one, as a one family, one brother. You know, we try to keep the, the, the perfect record because that ain't really nothing we're stressing about through a game at a time. It don't even matter. We take one game at a time, four state titles in a row. That was the standard Pulaski Academy heading into last season, but a quest for 1/5 straight fell in the state semifinals. Now it's a new year, a new team and a new division into the class seven A. We're at the top of the food chain, new competition, new opponents expectations don't change. Obviously, being in five and six A and winning a lot, you hear you don't play competition, come do it in seven A. So that's what we're planning on doing. Class seven A is no easy challenge. But for the Bruins, they're using the way last year ended as motivation. This team right here was, was hurt. The juniors here, they were hurt after last year losing in the semi pros to Greenwood, seeing the looks on their faces and knowing how it made me feel just isn't a feeling I would wish upon anybody. And I think that motivates our guys more than anything. The loss in the state semi certainly struck a chord with the Bruins for head coach Anthony Lucas. He felt it was time for some changes. I want a whole different, I guess a whole different shift in program because what the things we did last year didn't work. So I stood up and I said this, we're gonna change a lot of this. A lot of things as for what those changes will be. We don't exactly know what yet, but we shows how much he cares about us and wants us to be great, but no matter the classification or the way last year ended, Coach Lucas still has one goal for his team to get our kids ready to compete on Friday night and then get back to War Memorial in December. That's it. We take a trip to Bigelow where last year the Panthers made history, bringing the small town's first ever football state title. Now they know that to dream big. They have to think small. So it was a great deal. Last year. We, um, soaked it in for a long time. But, uh, we, we try to talk to the guys and, you know, preach to them like it's a new year, new week type of thing. Focus week by week instead of focus on a bigger goal. I think we need to go into each day, focus on the next game and the next day of practice because each week the championship trophy brings something else along with it, a target on the back. But at the end of the day, we know we gotta come in and do what we need to do. They played in a lot of big games. You know, this whole group of guys has with, with baseball and basketball and now football as well. So I don't, I don't feel like that's something that really affects them playing on a big stage or anything like that. Even in the regular season, the Bigelow community makes every game feel big. We have everywhere filled up. You can't even barely walk into the, the gates just because of it. It was awesome right down that F line every time you walk through, they'll give us high fives every time. So it's just a big excitement to the hope. It's just the kind of motivation the Panthers need as they try to go back to back for Bigelow, the town that feels like an extension of the team being a player. And just knowing everybody sitting in the stand sitting out here is just behind you ready to go. I love it. Just feeling that community behind you is just a great feeling in general. And when you have that feeling, it makes you wanna play even more. The senators are used to being a power in the Arkansas high school football world and that's why they're confident that last season will end up being nothing more than an aberration last year was a disappointment. You know, around here, seven and four doesn't cut it. Head coach Todd Escola is hoping that one of last year's weaknesses playing so many freshmen can turn into this year's strength. And so we played a lot of freshmen and sophomores last year. Those kids have grown up now. Uh, they look like high school athletes add to that. A senior class that still remembers winning a state title and that's huge. You know, when, when you've got kids that, that have, have accomplished the ultimate goal in high school football and then have a, have a year where it, it didn't quite mesh to have those kids want to get back on top is, is it's irreplaceable. And along with the returners, the Senators have a new star under Center Tyson Braden, a transfer quarterback from North Little Rock. Um, Tyson will be a senior and he's fantastic. Does a great job. Very mature. Has all the tools can make all the throws. Braden has quickly gelled with his new team. Came in like a family. Uh, got a lot of extra hours after practice, so that was great. Um, got a lot of good words over the season and, um, you know, it's just been real good, Tyson's the guy and, and he's done a great job since the first day he arrived on campus just embracing the team, um diving into the playbook meeting with the coaches, uh, spending the extra hours just like he'd want any quarterback to. And it's that work ethic that the Senators hope can help restart their winning ways. You know, we're back to where we were with the Jack Clevelands and the buddy Gaston's where we were able to have our full playbook. You know, we hadn't had that for a couple of years. Uh, we were run more run oriented and this year we can throw it, we can run it, uh, balance offense, uh, run the ball, well, pass the ball, well, uh, move the ball down the field, move pretty quick and, uh, score a lot of sessions. And so the senators believe their best days aren't yet behind them. And we believe this year we'll get back to our standard of, of competing for championships and goal is always state championship. And if we don't do that, uh, we feel like the seasons a failure. Little Rock Christian football has been a model of consistency for nearly a decade now. Always sitting around 10 wins, always making noise deep in the state playoffs. But this year in Warrior Bill, there's a different key word to start the season. New, it's exciting always to start with a new team, a new group, you know, and a and a new season that's new head coach, Dustin Grimm, the former defensive coordinator who took over the head job this year. I feel like he brings a really big energy to the table. I feel like he brings just a great leadership to the table, him leading our defense last year, knowing his mindset, his game plan and everything is never gonna be simple. It's gonna be complicated, but that requires us as a team to be more disciplined, which I believe coach has done a great job about making us disciplined and the new head coach leads the Warriors into a new conference, the largest in the land. Once we got the news that we're going to seven A. Everybody was ready to face a challenge and willing to put in the work, the extra work that was needed to be ready for seven A this year, we've kind of uh came together and kind of realized that we need to finish and build a brotherhood because at the, at the end, you know, things may not go your way, but you always gotta pick it back up and keep your head up. The 78 central is a very physical and, and fast conference. And so, uh we're trying to amp up the physicality and practice so that we're prepared for the games. But, you know, I'm excited about these guys. I think they're ready. I think they're ready to prove uh what they can do despite all the new, the old standards remain. Touch down, win state. Simple as that. Nothing less. I know it's gonna take a lot of effort. A lot of blood, sweat and tears, but I feel like our guys are ready to go for it. Ben and Bryant squaring off Friday in the 50th anniversary of the rivalry. Our own nick neutral details. Just how crucial this game is. This pretty much is our state championship. To be honest, I mean, I, I'd probably rather win this and state championship. I had to choose the Salt Bowl is a big deal, not just to the fans and community, but for the players as well, it just to watch the Salt Bowl all these years. And then when I was 15, just beginning to play in it, it was a big deal and then it'll be a big year for me winning it and for all three years, that would be good. This year will be the 50th anniversary of a rivalry game between Bitten and Bryant. But as of late, this rivalry has been pretty one sided. You have to go back to 2005 to find the last time the Panthers beat the Hornets. We look at them as like our big brothers. Sometimes some people do. I cut that out. I don't even really know what the record is. I don't know what the streak is. I, I think they told me last year, I, I definitely forgot, but the pressure is probably gonna always be the same because of the magnitude of the game. You know, both teams want to win, both teams always have a chance to win. And after Bryant won the big game last year, it went on to win the seven A central but the quest for 1/6 straight state title fell short in the semi finals. We feel like we let some guys down, not, not necessarily let them down. It was still a great season, however, you want to spin, it just being able to compete in, compete for a championship is a big deal, but obviously that's not the goal, the goal of course is to win state and that's the same goal for the Panthers in the six A east. Like the Hornets. Benton had a terrific season in 2023 winning their conference, but falling in the semi finals, but both teams alike aren't focused on last season or even this season. But one game in particular, the Salt Bowl, we just want to be the ones that break the streak of us losing to them. And it's just, you know, you'll hear more about that if we beat them than they will, if they win, no matter how good you think you are, how good you should be. You've got to be able to execute and, uh, and continue to play no matter who you're playing. I think we all got a vengeance and I think war sta we're playing Friday night. We're trying to be right back there in December, a rivalry, 50 years in the making in Saline County. Nick Lere THV 11 sports.