Friday night, I wondered to myself if Calvin Hampton’s words following his team’s win were directed at me — among other people.

Before the season began, I told people not to judge Hampton in his first year as the new Meridian High School football coach. I looked at their murderer’s row of a non-divisional schedule, remembered who the Wildcats lost to graduated and recalled they played in Region 3-6A. Thus, I concluded it would be a tough year for the Wildcats and wrote a column stating as much. 

I have no idea if Hampton read that column, or if he even knew about my prediction. He certainly knew the chatter around town about how much his team was supposed to struggle this year, for the same reasons I listed. After the opening-week, 13-10 loss to Madison Central High School, I’m sure the chatter picked up.

Then, something funny happened. That murderer’s row got hammered by MHS over the next four weeks, with wins coming against South Panola, Wayne County, Noxubee County and Starkville before entering the area portion of the schedule.

All of a sudden, the Wildcats were on the prowl and playing with confidence, and that confidence is a reflection of their head coach.

Spend a few minutes talking to Hampton, and “confident” is an easy adjective with which to come away. That’s a good trait to have, because if your head coach isn’t confident, why should the players be? Hampton’s philosophy is it doesn’t matter who MHS is playing on any given Friday — Meridian, with its history and tradition of winning, should be the team acting like it’s the big dog, not the team intimidated by whatever name is stretched across the opposing team’s jersey.

Were there some hiccups along the way this season for the Wildcats? Sure. MHS dropped games against Pearl and Brandon, which finished Nos. 1 and 2 in Region 3-6A, respectively. The Wildcats have since rebounded by winning three straight, including a 25-7 victory against a Petal squad that bested Pearl in both teams’ regional opener. As MHS heads into its playoff matchup with George County High School, though, I’m thinking it might be time to admit this MHS team has a good shot of making some noise in the postseason.

“No one gave us a snowball’s chance in hell to be 9-3,” Hampton said following Friday’s win. “I hope we proved the state of Mississippi and some naysayers in our city wrong, and that we’re still the Meridian Wildcats.”

As I said before, I’m not sure if I was one of the ones toward whom Hampton was directing his comments. I’m sure there were plenty of people, whether they were people he knows personally or so-and-so who said such-and-such, Hampton had in mind when he said those words. I do know the words weren’t expressed in a vacuum — it was a calculated quote by Hampton to both generate excitement and let everyone know the way things were and how we all needed to understand.

The stage is set for the Wildcats, and they don’t have to look very far to find proof that anything can happen in the playoffs. Southeast Lauderdale High School is coming off a 49-42 overtime victory against a Morton High School team that includes Ole Miss receiver commit D.D. Bowie. Morton entered the game as a No. 1 seed, while the Tigers came in as the No. 4 seed. In other words, Southeast Lauderdale had the reputation as the team that “backed into” the playoffs and would soon be put out. Not so.

I don’t see MHS going into its round one game as an underdog, but should the Wildcats keep winning, they will eventually play a game in which the opponent is favored — at least, favored in the eyes of pundits. Hampton will make sure his team believes they’re the favorite, because they’re Meridian High.

I’ll take my crow medium rare, and I’ll be curious to see how many other folks the Wildcats serve crow this month.

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.