HAMILTON — Josh Baty looked at Brandon Johnson and smiled.
The Hamilton High School football coach felt relatively certain nobody was going to get hurt in the stretching line prior to the regular-season finale against Vardaman.
But in a season like this one, where Hamilton High lost 13 players to season-ending injuries and its players lost 14 games due to concussions, Baty couldn’t be sure, so he shared a smile with his athletic trainer and hoped for the best.
“The statement people say ‘they were falling like flies’, if you could come watch Hamilton football this year, you would know the meaning to that,” Baty said. “It was something I have never experienced and I never want to go through again.”
For the record, Hamilton finished 1-10 in Baty’s first season. The victory was a 54-12 decision against Biggersville on Oct. 2 in a Class 1A, Region 1 game. Hamilton was outscored 160-7 in its last three games.
But Baty isn’t looking for sympathy. In his second year at Hamilton — his first as its head coach — he watched smaller and less experienced players fight all season against older and stronger players. Many of those players were forced into service due to the rash of injuries that decimated the squad.
While there also were growing pains establishing a system of accountability that impacted personnel, Baty feels his team is “turning the page” after a trying season that involved more injuries than he has encountered in his career as a football coach.
“It started from day one,” Baty said. “The first day we could make contact, two kids went down, and they were down for four weeks. Then we go to (Mississippi) State and play East Webster (in the New Hope High Jamboree) and within the first four minutes of the game we have four starters who have season-ending injuries.”
‘Falling like flies’
Baty said the team didn’t have anyone hurt in the season opener against South Pontotoc (a 49-13 loss on Aug. 21), but he said the “gates just opened” after that and players “started falling like flies.” By the stretch run, when Hamilton faced Falkner, West Lowndes, Smithville and Vardaman in its last four games, Baty said Hamilton had 11 freshmen and sophomores playing against Falkner and 11 freshmen playing against Smithville. The Lions started the season with nine upperclassmen (juniors and seniors) on a roster of 39. They finished with two.
Baty said the injuries ranged from ankles, to knees, to shoulders, to concussions. Baty said the positive the Lions will take from all of the injuries is 19 of the team’s 22 starters in the last five games were freshmen or sophomores.
Unfortunately, Hamilton took its lumps using players who often were smaller and less experienced than their counterparts in Region 1.
“Each week it seemed like we were having to do something different as far as personnel because the guy you depended on — or two or three of those guys — was no longer here,” Baty said. “We played 11 games and if you do the numbers, we are losing 1.2 kids per game. In 1A football, it is not like you are at Tupelo, or even when I was at Amory, you can roll a couple more of them out there that look the same. Here you have your juniors and seniors and there is a noticeable difference between the freshmen and the juniors and seniors. Are the freshmen just as talented or going to be just as good? Yeah, but in 1A ball you don’t have the luxury of rolling 11 or 12 new people in there when people get hurt.”
Nothing like he has experienced
Baty, who served as an assistant coach to Ray Weeks last season, thought he had experienced injury-filled seasons. He said his last year at Amory the Panthers had four players go down with torn anterior cruciate ligaments in their knees. But those numbers pale in comparison to what Hamilton went through this season. At times, it felt like Johnson, who works at Encore Rehab of Columbus, a physical therapy clinic, was performing triage every game.
“This is the most normal injury season I have had. I have just had a lot of it,” Johnson said. “We started with 35 and we had 20 in the stretching line (against Vardaman in the regular-season finale). It has been a long year for me and for coach Baty.”
Johnson has worked as an athletic trainer for 13 years. He spent five years as a physical trainer at Rehab for Work, where he worked with Heritage Academy and Caledonia, Columbus, New Hope, West Lowndes, Noxubee County, and Hamilton high schools.
At Encore, Johnson has worked with Noxubee County, Hamilton, South Lamar, Lamar County, and Sulligent high schools.
Prior to that, Johnson worked at Pioneer Community Hospital of Aberdeen, where he worked with Caledonia, Hamilton, and Shannon high schools.
Johnson said dealing with concussions is the biggest thing he faced this season. But that was just the beginning. Johnson said Hamilton’s starting quarterback tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in the jamboree and played four games before he went out for the season. He said a neck injury forced a player to miss the first three games, an offensive lineman had knee surgery and missed the last eight games, a player missed 10 games due to a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his non-dominant arm, a player missed the last three games due to an ankle, another player missed seven games because he needed to have knee surgery.
Johnson said he had six players go through concussion protocol between the game against Smithville and the game against the Vardaman to be able to play in the last game. After having to care for two players who suffered “severe” concussions in which they lost their memories for extended periods, Johnson said he stresses to the coaches and to the players that they have to let him know when they see symptoms. He said he no one can afford to take chances if they feel like they have a headache or any related symptoms because brain injuries require special attention.
Lions are ‘snake-bit’
Johnson doesn’t feel parents are going to prevent their children from playing football due to concussions or the possibility of injuries. He said he works with the coaches and players in every sport to prevent as many injuries as possible. Sometimes, though, he admitted injuries are going to happen, especially in a full-contact sport like football. Other times, he said teams are just “snake-bit.”
“As a parent, I put myself in that position and ask, ‘How would I feel if my son got hit one game and didn’t know who his daddy was?’ ” Johnson said, talking about dealing with concussions. “When you’re around the kids all of the time, you start treating them like your kids. Having been at the school for 12 or 13 years, you have seen them come through school.
“It was hard when my quarterback finally said, ‘I can’t go anymore.’ The coaches are in the dressing room crying with him because it is his senior year. It is hard when there is a kid with a concussion and you look at him and you have known him for six years and he shakes hands with you and you have to re-introduce yourself to him.”
Despite having injuries erase the team’s experience and any of its depth, Baty said he enjoyed coaching his players because they didn’t give up.
For example, he said one of the Lions played the season with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. He said the player’s shoulder would pop in and out of place four or five times in a game and he would keep going.
Baty said that mentality counter-balanced the knowledge that the players realized they were outmanned and undersized, and sometimes “they knew just by watching the other team walk off the bus that it might be a long night, but they stuck their nose in there and never quit.”
Don’t feel sorry for Hamilton
Still, Baty said Hamilton came close several times, especially games against East Union (30-26 loss to Aug. 28) and Hatley (28-14 loss on Sept. 4). He said Hamilton also was tied with Falkner at the end of three quarters and led Coldwater by three points with two minutes left in the game.
Baty said the injuries forced the Lions to go with a strategy in which they tried to make the game as short as possible and be as physical as they could for as long as they could.
“We talk every day about feeling sorry for ourselves. We are not going to feel sorry for ourselves,” Baty said. “I don’t feel sorry for myself. I don’t feel sorry for what happened. That is just a part of life and you move on from it. As soon as you can learn there are bad things that are going to happen in life, you just have to be a better person, these kids will become better people. That is the No. 1 goal for me.”
Baty said he didn’t see signs that the injuries and concussions were taking their toll until late in the season in a game against West Lowndes. In that game, senior Aaron Fontonet suffered a concussion. Baty said Fontonet was one of the team leaders and someone the young players looked up to.
“It didn’t happen until Smithville,” Baty said. “We had a big injury against West Lowndes. When that happened, you could see it in their faces that I am ready for it to be over with. That is something we had to fight against.”
Preparing for 2016
Baty said the players didn’t want to quit but that they were ready to move on to a new point. He said the team is starting to turn the page on the 2015 season and establish the foundation with workouts five days a week. Baty said 16 members from the football team are involved in weight training three days a week and conditioning two times a week. He said other members of the football team who are on the school’s basketball team said they are eager to re-join the team after basketball season.
To prevent a repeat of 2015, Baty said the Lions will re-dedicate themselves to getting bigger, stronger, and faster. He joked that he became very close to doctors in Starkville and at Columbus Orthopedic due to all of the injuries his players suffered.
“We came to the conclusion we are just not strong enough,” Baty said. “I am not saying there never has been a dedication to the weight room, but there needs to be a bigger dedication to the weight room because the stronger you are, the less likely injuries happen.”
Baty hopes a 300-foot expansion of the school’s weight room and the addition of four new racks, a leg extension machine, and other equipment will help all of the student-athletes get stronger. He said a sand pit is going to put in on the football team’s practice field. He also said telephone poles are going to be dropped off there that the players will carry as a team to build unity and strength.
“We’re going to make things harder because the harder I can make them now the easier it will be on Friday nights,” Baty said.
Baty said he already has had two players tell him the offseason workouts are too hard for them, but he said he is moving forward because he wants to establish a standard for the program that will allow future teams to avoid the injuries and have more success. He also said he isn’t going to beg players to play anymore.
Baty hopes the offseason workouts will help in a transformation he saw signs of happening at the end of the season. At halftime of the game against Smithville, Baty said he talked to freshman tackle Grant Thompson, who is 6-foot-5, 240 pounds. Thompson was blocking a player he was blocking was about 6-foot, 195 pounds.
“He comes in and says, ‘Coach, that is what you’re talking about. That sucker is strong,’ ” Baty said. “That is when I go, ‘They’re listening.’ ”
The players in the offseason program also are eating. Baty said all of the Lions drink a 24-ounce glass of chocolate milk and eat two peanut butter sandwiches before they leave every day. He said the idea is to put as many calories into them as possible.
Bulking up
Baty said the school’s booster club and parents also are helping the cause by bringing peanut butter and chocolate milk to put in the refrigerator. He said a blender also is on the wish list so coaches and players will be able to make protein shakes to fuel their growth.
“We tell the kids you have to keep making that step,” Baty said. “If it is a day-to-day step or a week-to-week step, you always have to be making a step forward. We have done a lot, and we’re still turning the page.
Another way Baty is trying to turn the page is to provide the best equipment possible. He said he plans to meet with representatives from football equipment companies Riddell and Schutt to see if he can find a way to get helmets that are higher-rated and designed to provide better protection against concussions.
The problem is Baty, who also is the school’s athletic director, said his football budget is a fraction of what it would take to cover the cost to purchase helmets — priced from $500-600 — for all of his players. He said he plans to meet with the representatives of each equipment company and ask them to explain why the helmets can’t be more affordable to give more players a chance to play the game. He said some players don’t want to keep playing after seeing two of the Lions have to miss the rest of the season after suffering concussions.
Baty said three of his players have the higher-rated helmets — the Revo-Speed Flex model — because their parents purchased them.
“To me, it is about the safety of the kids, it is not about making money,” Baty said. “To me, if it the safest thing on the market, it should be at a reasonable price for everybody to afford. Smaller schools don’t get the money other people do, so it is harder for us.”
As the Lions continue to turn the page, Baty can still smile, as can Johnson. Both men hope Hamilton High doesn’t have to go through another season like 2015. They feel they have learned valuable lessons and that their players — through all of the bumps, bruises, concussions, and injuries — have a better appreciation of what they have to do to prevent everything from happening again.
“Those younger kids found out what it takes to overcome things and to survive, and they will be better for it next year,” Baty said. “I am not saying we’re going to North Half next year, but those freshmen and sophomores, when those two groups are juniors and seniors, with the eighth-grade group, which also works, we will have a chance to be special.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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