Long Beach seeking first playoff appearance since 2011

Three or less wins in a season just isn’t cutting it for the Long Beach football program. The Bearcats have post-season aspirations for the new campaign, despite missing the playoffs in each of the first three years of the Forrest Williams era. This week is the start of changing all that in 2017, one true South Mississippi football practice at a time.
No hash marks on the field for the Bearcats, at least not until their season opener two weeks from Thursday at Pass Christian. Until then, it’s business as usual with next level expectations. Coach Forrest Williams said, “We’re entering Year 4 now, so our guys have a lot of comfort with what we’re doing. It’s not reinventing the wheel now.”
Running back Dennis Andrews said, “It changes really quick. That lets us know that the season is here. We’ve got to put in work, we’ve got to win games. We’re trying to make it to the playoffs, we’re trying to get a ring on our finger. That gets us mentally and physically prepared for the season.”
For the sake of comparison, Long Beach was winless the year before Forrest Williams took over as head coach. Even though the Bearcats are coming off a 3-9 season, the absolutely loaded senior class has everyone optimistic. Center Bryce Warden said, “Coming from where we were, we weren’t much of like a winning team, you could say. But our program is building, and we have 20 seniors this year, so we should have a pretty good year this year.”
“That’s really what gives us cause for excitement as coaches are these seniors that have paid the price over the last several years and done the work, and paid the price in investments so we’re ready to see them have the senior year that you want every senior to have,” said Coach Williams.
“We look at that. We have a team that we can win some games this year, you know,” said Andrews.
The casual observer may not know, but the players in the locker room seem to have a pretty good idea. In fact, they’re already thinking post-season for the first time since 2011 until someone says otherwise. “We’re used to coming in and only winning three games every year, so and people just usually look at us like y’all can’t win. So to the program it would be a really big accomplishment to the program, because I could go out of my senior year saying we made it to the playoffs instead of saying we just went 3-9 every year throughout my high school career,” said Warden.
“We’re going to do something Long Beach hasn’t done in a long time, so that’s going to mean a lot to us, to everybody, from the program, to the school, to everybody in Long Beach,” said Andrews.
In place of the Shrimp Bowl, the season opener for Long Beach versus Pass Christian will be the first high school game on the Coast in 2017.