News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days: D’Iberville Warriors
All about the competition at stop number three on News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days where the D’Iberville Warriors look to take one step back, two steps forward after being dealt a truly bizarre hand in 2022.
“Compete. Every day is a competition between us. We make each other better.”
“I see those guys competing. Now I want to compete for them too. And when I get out there, I want to fight for them, and they’re going to fight for me. I know they’re going to have my back too.”
“Competition is everything. We want to make these kids as comfortable in confrontation and in competition as they possibly can be so that it’s not unfamiliar to them when they get into a Friday night game.”
Best-on-best, mano-a-mano, you versus me, there’s a method to the madness under second-year Head Coach Josh Ladner. “Competition makes champions.”
“I just know that we put the hardest work in, in all of the states, put the hardest work in, effort.”
“When you come out, you always want to be the best player anywhere you are, so competing against each other, that just feeds our minds more to be better every day.”
“What I look for is, how do you handle losing? Like I had a kid out there just now that lost in the barrel race, and you could tell he was ready to punch something. That’s the kind of kids that you want on Friday night. We never want to accept losing. We never want to accept 4-7. We never want to accept mediocre. Our goal is to get there and stay there, and I want kids surrounding me that feel the same exact way.”
Safe to say that 4-7 record doesn’t sit well with anyone in D’Iberville’s locker room, especially on the back of a combined three-year mark of 29-6, including a Region 4 Class 6A title in 2020. “I personally myself look more towards the losses. I know it’s probably not the best thing to do, but I definitely look more towards the losses for motivation against a team like a Biloxi or Hancock, like if we would’ve just beat those teams, just score one more point, stopped them on the last drive, we’d be in the playoffs. We’d be having a whole different conversation.”
As it stands, D’Iberville’s district mark of 3-4, not quite good enough to crack the post-season, despite ending the year with back-to-back wins over Harrison Central and St. Martin. But given the lemon situation of graduating 35 seniors and returning just one starter, the Warriors still made lemonade. “Being that close with an inexperienced team, and this year, we’re way more experienced, I feel like we’re going to shock a lot of people.”
“I don’t know that there’s a harder working team in the state or anywhere, and if anybody can close that gap in a quicker time frame, it’s going to be D’Iberville.”
“We’re just ready to get that taste out of our mouth, that 4-7. We didn’t like that. It’s not D’Iberville football, saying, oh, y’all aren’t good, y’all aren’t going to be nothing, and people around the Coast, oh, D’Iberville, they’re falling off, we’ve just got to prove that we’re not falling off. We’re here to stay. We’ve got those district championships in the back, so we’re here to prove why we deserve them.”
In another strange twist of fate, last year’s leading rusher Kevin Rogers is the only one of 14 seniors that played ninth grade football at D’Iberville.
But this year, the Warriors return 16 starters as well as new QB1 Connor Jones to operate the wing-t.
The defense is anchored by leading tackler Malcolm Gowdy, Izaiah Ladnier, and Marquise Washington, and it’s a hungry bunch on that side of the ball after giving up 15 more points per game in 2022 than they did in 21. “No challenge, no change. So that means we need a challenge in order to change, so if somebody calls us out, that’s a challenge for us.”
“Like Jordan, I hate to bring that up because I know a lot of people do, but like Jordan would always take one challenge, like you could say just the slightest thing to Michael Jordan and he would just snap and just click out of nowhere, and he took that as a challenge. And as a result of that challenge, he changed the way he played to a higher level.”
D’Iberville is just one of five Coast schools to ever reach that highest level of winning a state championship, back in 2002, when Coach Ladner played for the Warriors.
Now, he’s trying to recreate those glory days for the next generation. “Need a ring, need a big ring on my finger.”
“He’s built for this. I mean he always talks about he’s going to die here; he’s going to die in that chair. He’s kind of thrived in this role, so I think big steps for this year.”
“The greatest impact that I had were the kids that were surrounding me at the time, the comradery that we built, and man, I so badly want to see that happen again. I feel like we’ve missed out on some opportunities recently and not being able to capitalize on that, and I just know if that window ever opens for us again and I do believe that it will happen soon, I want to make sure that we’re ready when it happens.”
D’Iberville kicks off the new campaign at home against Columbia on Friday, August 25th.
