News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days: Christian Collegiate Academy Bulldogs

GULFPORT, Miss. (WXXV) — Christian Collegiate Academy in Gulfport is expanding its football horizons in 2023 on its quest to win it all.

“Our whole lives, we were waiting for this moment being a senior, getting ready for our last high school football season, and it’s just an amazing thing God gave us the ability to do this and that we’re here doing it,” said CCA senior wide receiver/outside linebacker D.J. Biggs.

“I’m really excited because it’s my last year,” said CCA senior center/middle linebacker Nathaniel Mooney. “I’ve been working my entire life for this. It’s my last chance to really make a stake with my name in here, and trying to have some fun while I do it too.”

Six seniors are leading Christian Collegiate Academy into a season unlike any campaign every before seen for CCA.

The 8-man Bulldogs kick off the year with back-to-back dates against Bowling Green out of Franklinton, Louisiana and Columbia Academy – the first two games played against 11-man teams in school history.

“They definitely want to show that they belong on the field with anybody,” said CCA head football coach Steve Spinks. “We had a good year. We had a good run last year and we did some really good things, and I think that they want to show those 11-man teams that we can play with you. And that’s not being cocky or arragant about it, but football is football.”

CCA is coming off its best season since 2015, when the Bulldogs finished as state runners-up. Last year, they posted an overall record of 8-3 and an MAIS 2A District 2 mark of 4-1, resulting in the program’s first playoff appearance since 2016, a 51-point thumping of Prairie View Academy played right off Dedeaux Road.

“Home crowd, being at home, first round of the playoffs, after what happened that last season, losing in the first round of the playoffs, it just got you going, got your adrenaline running, hype, ready to win the game, and having that at home was a great advantage and it just felt great, and then great win,” said Biggs.
“It said that we had the ability, that we can go forward and that if we work hard and that we keep doing what we’re doing, we don’t get distracted by nothing, that we will go forward than we did before,” said Mooney.

In the second round, CCA’s state championship dreams were crushed by Newton County Academy by way of a 40-34 defeat.

“Playoffs wasn’t our goal,” said Spinks. “Our goal was to get to the state championship game, and so when we lost that second round game to Newton, they were heartbroken.”

“It’s still a thing that it leaves a little break in our hearts today, but we try to get past it and we move on from it,” said Biggs.
“I got angry,” said Mooney. “I got very emotional. I did grow off of that. I did change. I’m better. I’m faster. I’m stronger from that moment, and I think from that loss and those experiences, I have gotten a lot better.”

CCA returns eight starters and is coming off its best offensive season since 2014, but in order to get over the hump Spinks is implementing a spread offense with some air raid concepts, which features Josiah Colwell as the new starting quarterback, moving Biggs into a big play wide receiver role.

“I made the decision because last year I kept saying, we’ve got to be able to throw the football, and all we really could do was run,” said Spinks. “We were a run team, a run-heavy team. D.J. did a great job but teams knew what we were doing, so somewhere you’ve got to say, hey, we’ve got to change some stuff. We’ve got to look at what we’re doing and see if we can improve some things.”

Spinks also says he’s turned more of the leadership over to his half-dozen seniors, who all started with him when they were freshmen, now ready to leave their mark on CCA football forever.

“We come to play, and we put our hearts out on the field, and we’re going to leave everything we have on this field,” said Biggs.
“We want to be good role models,” said Mooney. “We want to seem them look at us and be like, I want to be like them. I want to work as hard as them. That’s what I want to do.”
“Four years ago, we sat down and we talked as a team with these freshmen, and we said, and I laid out a road map, and I said, if you’ll do this, this and this, you’ll experience success, and each year we’ve gotten better,” said Spinks. “We won three games, we won five games, we won eight games, and hopefully they’re seeing it. They’ve bought into it. They know what the expectations are, and this could be a big year for them.”

Those 11-man games are right off the bat against Bowling Green to kick off the 2023 season on August 18, followed by Columbia Academy on August 25.