Poplarville building championship program

Poplarville’s last two runs to the 4A state championship game both started the same way, a season opening loss at St. Martin in 2016 and a season opening loss at Picayune in 2018.

Other than that, the Hornets have only lost two games over the past three years: the 2016 state title game and last year’s South State final against East Central. Thirty-eight wins later, Poplarville is still missing that ever-elusive state crown, but maybe not for long.

Poplarville’s climb back to the state championship game for the second time in three years doesn’t come with a ladder back down. “It means everything right now. I mean we’ve worked a long time, we’ve worked really hard.”

Poplarville Right Guard Jake Menzato said, “Just the way these guys worked, I just felt like we were always meant to do something special.”

The Hornets cleared the last rung with Friday’s South State victory over East Central in a payback game from last year’s Hornet Bowl heartbreak. Poplarville Wide Receiver Canaan Ray said,”Ever since that night we lost to them last year it’s been the one thing on our minds other than the state championship, getting back and getting a little revenge for that game.”

Head Coach Jay Beech said, “Yeah, we’ve got a confident group of kids and that just reaffirmed what we had been believing all along that we do have a good football team and we can play good offensively, defensively and on special teams and we are prepared I believe to play and win this Saturday.”

Representing the north is a one-loss Louisville team that has eight state championships in program history. Poplarville has none. “Well, it’s a chance to go kind of David versus Goliath. We have zero state championships, they have eight. And we’re trying to get our first one and we’re going to give it our all. We’re not going to be intimidated whatsoever. We’re going to go up there and play as hard as we possibly can and see what happens.”

Combatting what Coach Beech refers to as Louisville’s ‘football factory’ is a 25-man senior class ready to make amends for its 2016 loss to Lafayette. “To finish. We know what we’ve got to do, we know we can get there and we’ve just got to finish.”

“Being there before and being there two years ago and having lost the game, I think it’s pretty easy for us to come back down to reality and realize that we’ve got one more game. We’ve got to do that again one more time and if we can do it one more time, we’ll have accomplished the ultimate goal.”

Poplarville and Louisville will kick things off from USM’s MM Roberts Stadium at 11 a.m. on Saturday.