News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days: Long Beach Bearcats

LONG BEACH, Miss. (WXXV) — The Long Beach football program has a long way to go on its road back to winning ways, but it’s a challenge the Bearcats face head on.

“I’d say the attitude,” said Long Beach junior quarterback Will Brady. “This year, we’re a lot happier to be here. We don’t have all the bad attitudes we had last year. We’re here to play football and win. We’re not here to come out and hang out.”
“The biggest thing was the culture,” said Long Beach head coach Jacob Massey. “I’m not saying that the culture was bad, but implementing my vision and what I wanted the culture to look like.”

No one said the Massey turnaround would happen overnight for a program that has just one winning season in the last 11 years (2017), now riding a 30-game district losing streak into 2023.

“You guys just watched a senior class go their whole varsity careers without winning a district game. How hungry are you guys to [turn that around?],” asked WXXV Sports Director Jeff Haeger.
“You have no idea,” said Long Beach senior defensive end Colt Busby. “Dude, every day I just come out here, just one. That’s all I want is one. I’d be really happy with a lot more, but I need one.”

“You don’t know what it feels like to go 0-13 for your whole entire high school career,” said Long Beach junior running back Taj Aubert. “It’s getting old, so we need people ready to strive and ready to win, turn it around.”

“If we could just get that monkey off our back, and say, hey, if we could get that one win and kind of move past that.” said Massey.

Despite going 0-11 last year, the Bearcats showed signs of life in mid-September, dropping a non-district game to South Pike by just five points, and then another one-score loss in their Region 4-5A opener against Vancleave by eight points.

“Those hurt real bad,” said Aubert.

“Dumb penalties on us, just going back to what we call same old Long Beach, kind of getting down on ourselves mentality, and then we’re mad at the other team and we’re doing stupid stuff,” said Busby.

“I think it could’ve gone completely different,” said Massey. “We could’ve had three or four wins last year, but that’s the biggest thing is what we tried to stress in the off-season is focusing on those little things because that’s what will cost you a ball game.”

Introducing the new 6A Long Beach motto for 2023 – TNT – standing for ‘Takes No Talent,’ encouraging players to focus on the intangibles of winning.

“Hard work, hustle, effort,” said Massey.

“You don’t have to be the best guy to come out here and give your best,” said Brady. “You can just show up and out-work somebody. If you do that everyday, I think you can make a name for yourself, and if everybody on the team does that, you can make a name for the team.”

On offense, some of the buys making a name for LBHS are Brady, alongside key weapons Aubert, Edjuan Trautman and Andre Windham. They’re all working to bring Massey’s brand new triple option vision to life.

“I’m excited to see the offense do their art,” said Aubert.

“Something new,” said Brady. “It allows us to really take control of the offense. It puts the ball in my hands a lot, lets me make all the decisions, and it’s tough to game plan for decisions.”

“Go kind of back to my roots,” said Massey. “I was a triple option quarterback in high school and college, and we’re going to run some triple option concepts on offense, which I think will give us a chance to keep us in some ball games and have a chance to win late.”

On the other side of the ball, Massey says Busby is a player to watch, as well as Sage Fayard and Ashton Watros. All in all, the Bearcats are returning 11 seniors and at least 17 starters, hungrier than ever to win their first game since September 4, 2020, and eventually, their first playoff game since 2011.

“Even in middle school not getting wins, not getting wins, it’s something that people would say we’re supposed to be used to, but we’re not,” said Brady. “We want to win, so we’re going to do anything we can to get it.”

“We talk a lot about, we’re the class to turn it around, set that example, so I think that it would mean everything to us,” said Busby. “You can turn it around. You don’t always have to be losing, you know?”

Long Beach kicks off the season on the road at Rival Pass Christian in the annual Oyster Bowl on August 25.