By JOEY HOWARD, Maroon, Green and Gold
Season-opening football games are special, very special.
Many high school football teams across South Mississippi tee it up officially this weekend. Sure, there have been some jamborees and some openers last week. But it gets real on Friday.
The Conference Era – as many of you know is where this blog mostly dives into – was from the 1950 to the 1980 football seasons. It’s when the Mississippi High Schools did not have a state playoff system in place. What was in place were many conferences – Big Eight, DeSoto, Apache, Singing River, Pine Belt, Midsouth, South Little Dixie and so on.
The Poplarville Hornets had 31 season-opening games in those Conference years and posted a 24-7 record. That’s a winning percentage of .774. In fact, the Hornets had a 13-game win streak in season openers from 1951 to 1963.
It’s been 45 years now since I last donned a Poplarville Hornet uniform for a season-opener. My last opener was in 1976, a 34-0 blanking of Lumberton which helped our squad go on and capture the Apache Conference championship.
But that was not my favorite of the three season-openers I played in. My favorite was the 1975 season-opening game on the road against Picayune. It was the debut of Pat Morris as the Hornet head coach and it was the fourth game of the Pearl River Classic, sponsored by the Picayune Item, as the Maroon Tide held a 2-1 advantage. And, Poplarville had just left the DeSoto Conference and joined the Gulf Coast Conference, which was only a one-year membership as we hitched our wagons to the Apache in 1976. Continue reading