25 Teams in 25 Days: West Harrison Hurricanes

No place to go but up at stop number 19 on News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days where the West Harrison Hurricanes are more than ready to go from learning how to win to actually winning in year three of the Quincy Patrick era.

What’s any good underdog story without a reference to another underdog story of biblical proportions?

Head Coach Quincy Patrick said, “David, as a young man, was appointed and anointed to be king. But he wasn’t king the very next day. He had to wait and work and be patient to be king, so we have to work and be patient to be one day hopefully put some wins on the board.”

As a football program in just its 12^th year of operation, West Harrison has been fighting an uphill battle since 2009. Even though Goliath isn’t on the 2020 schedule, the Hurricanes are still fighting the reputation of 11 straight losing seasons to this day. Defensive back/ running back Jaidon Shelby said, “Everybody expects us to be the worst team on the Coast. Everybody is expecting us not to excel. I’m just taking that to heart and letting them know that there’s nothing that’s going to stop us.”

“These guys just haven’t won. They don’t know how to win, and that takes winning to learn how to win. So to learn how to win, you have to win. So hopefully that will show up in the record book this year.”

After winning two games in 2018, the Hurricanes took a step back last season, posting an overall mark of just 1-10. However, West Harrison made a statement at Pass Christian in week four with a 41-38 victory over the Pirates, who actually went on to have their best season in school history. “We went to the Pass Christian game knowing that we were going to win. We went to all of the other games thinking what if, what if, what if.”

That second guess work really showed up during non-district play, during a four game stretch in which the Canes scored almost 39 points per contest. In fact, their 254 points scored throughout the course of the entire season is a new school record. Defensive back/ wide receiver Riley Wyble said, “We’ve just got to be open-minded because I feel like some we just let get away from us last year, and this year we just need to play better and finish games.”

Quarterback/ Defensive Back Josiah Kahn said, “Really, we’re learning from last year and that’s making us better. Like starting off the game quick, finishing it, different things like that.”

“Last year, we started the first quarter like we didn’t know what we were going to expect. And then later on, we started knowing that we could play with these guys. Now it’s just our mentality, we’re there first quarter all the way to the fourth.”

This year, the offensive production is gonna have to come from somewhere else following the departure of now PRCC running Llanes Dickerson, who led the entire state with 17 total touchdowns through the first four weeks of the season. “Couldn’t really tackle him, he was just gone.”

“Llanes was a dog. When I gave it to him, I knew something good was going to happen.”

“Llanes still checks on these guys every day. He’s texting, he’s calling, he’s FaceTiming, he’s Xbox Liveing them.”

“I was just talking to him yesterday, and he told me after his jamboree game his senior year that he was sad and I was like why were you sad? He was like because he wasn’t working hard enough. And so a guy that says he wasn’t working hard enough and how good he is shows us no matter how much practice that we have, we could always be better.”

Sounds a lot like West Harrison’s motto ‘NOW’, standing for ‘no opportunity wasted,’ as this year’s class of 12 seniors, none of which missed a single summer workout, continues to embrace its one shining moment just like David. “Even in our district we’re the little brother. We’ve got D’Iberville in the same school district, Harrison Central in the same school district so even in our school district we’re the little brother. But that’s not going to change until you win some ball games. But our guys, they’re bought in, they’re locked in and they’re ready to go.”

“We fight it every day. We’re all we’ve got at this point, so we’ve just got to prove people wrong.”

“The underdog, it makes me want to go harder. It gives me a bigger reason to prove them wrong.”

West Harrison lost road games at Bay High and Vancleave due to COVID-19, leaving the Hurricanes with a jamboree at Gautier on Friday followed by their season home opener against Long Beach on September 4^th.