JACKSON — Nineteen years can pass in the blink of an eye.
But time slowed for a moment Monday to allow 12 head coaches to reflect on a season’s work.
Regardless of whether the coaches were from Class 1A or Class 6A programs, all of the men shared the stage with players and administrators and stressed how special it was to be assembled with some of the state’s top football programs.
Jamie Mitchell has coached in plenty of those places. His travels started in 1990 at Saltillo High School, and along the way he has worked at six more schools, including two — Charleston and Olive Branch — that also were represented Monday at the Mississippi High School Activities Association’s Road to the Championships luncheon at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
On this day, though, Mitchell was dressed in the black and gold of Starkville High. In his second season as head coach, Mitchell has guided Starkville to a 12-2 record, a Class 5A North State title, and a state championship date against Picayune (12-2) at 7 p.m. Saturday (Mississippi Public Broadcasting) at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
Mitchell, a Mississippi State graduate, was an assistant coach at Saltillo, Pontotoc, and Tupelo before earning his first job as a head coach at Ripley High in 1997. He also coached at Charleston, Olive Branch, and Itawamba Agricultural before landing a job at Starkville High. It was a position he tried to get 10 years ago, but he knew he wasn’t ready for it. He said last year when he was introduced that he felt he needed to grow as a professional. Years of lessons and tweaking strategies and plans have taught Mitchell plenty of things he put into practice at Starkville. Now it’s time to reap the rewards of all of that hard work.
“There is such tradition there, and we have preached that every day and talked to them about it every day,” Mitchell said. “Our community demands it. They don’t expect it, they demand it. That is why I came to Starkville. I knew of the tradition and I knew the expectations. It is just not acceptable for us not to be successful. We try to drive our kids to that point. We want them to understand that finishing second is not an option for us. They have done a great job of really, really fast-forwarding things for us, and it has been a great year.”
Starkville upended two-time defending Class 5A state champion West Point in the North State semifinals. It then had to beat Ridgeland at Ridgeland for a second time to earn the program’s first chance at a state title since 2001, when Starkville won its fourth football championship. Since then, though, the program had been past the first round in the playoffs only twice (2003, ’07) until this season. In fact, the Yellow Jackets entered 2011 with three consecutive losing seasons, but Mitchell said the disappointment of 2010 was a starting point the team needed to experience. Starkville lost its final four games, including a 34-32 defeat against Columbus, and fell short of a playoff berth.
“We had to got through not knowing how to win and we had to go through understanding how to overcome adversity,” Mitchell said. “Those are things you wish you didn’t have to go through because there are tough lessons in those things. We didn’t know how to win games last year. We knew how to play in games and we knew how to get competitive, but we didn’t know how to win ’em. We paid a heavy price and there was a lot of heartache, but it is worth every bit of it to see where we are now.”
This season, has seen the rebirth of a proud football program that also won state titles in 1984, ’94, and ’95. From 1994-2003, Starkville won at least nine games each season, and had eight years of at least 10 wins or more.
A powerful defense and the emergence of junior quarterback Gabe Myles have been two key parts of Starkville’s engine this season.
Mitchell said he helped foster that championship mind-set by taking the four state championship footballs and putting them on pedestals and moving them out of the coaches office into the team meeting room. He also said he made sure the four football state title banners were put up on the press box of the stadium to make sure everyone knows about the uncles, brothers, fathers, and cousins who have been part of the football program’s success and that it is the players’ job to help the program get back to that level.
Nineteen years ago, Mitchell never imagined getting the chance to play for a state title would prove so elusive. Now that he has helped Starkville get back, he hopes his players will appreciate all of the lessons learned on their journey so it won’t take as long to get back again.
“I have had some great football teams,” Mitchell said. “I had some great football teams at Charleston (2000-01), some great football teams at Olive Branch (2002-05), and some great football teams at Itawamba (2006-09). You can have a great team and still not get here. You have to get all of the breaks. So many things have to line up for you to get here. It is a magical ride, no question.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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