Pepper Posey

Late hires in football are considered to be any hiring that takes place after spring training.

In Pepper Posey’s case, he was hired at Choctaw Central just a few days before fall camp started in 2018. The Warriors finished with one win last fall but managed to break what was at the time the longest active losing streak in Mississippi high school football at 32 with a 36-20 win over Kemper County.

This season has seen even more success for Choctaw Central, as the Warriors are 4-4 overall and 2-1 in MHSAA Region 4-4A heading into Thursday’s senior night game against West Lauderdale. When he reflects on how far the players have come in just a year, Posey said actually having a spring training and summer program under his watch made a big difference.

“I met the players on Sunday and started fall practice on Monday in the hots days of August,” Posey recalled about the 2018 season. “It’s very hard, very challenging. The kids don’t know you, and you don’t know the kids or your assistant coaches. There are a lot of tangibles and intangibles that will make you pull your hair out.”

Posey was unaware of the losing streak until he arrived on the job, and his immediate focus was both developing a relationship with his players and getting them to believe in themselves. 

“You can’t have an iron fist like in the old days,” Posey said. “The kids have to warm up to you, and if you go in with an iron fist, you’ll run them off.”

Anthony Thames, who was interim coach at Choctaw Central before Posey was hired, was the team’s offensive coordinator last year, and he stayed on in the role in 2019. Posey also added some assistant coaches after last season and implemented a summer workout program designed to both get his players in better shape and track their physical progress.

“I used to be in a lot better shape than I’m in now, but I’m a big proponent of the weight room,” Posey said. “Football is really a year-round sport, and if you take three to four weeks off, you’ve lost something in the summer. I’m not saying you have to grunt every day, but if you’re not putting in two to three days a week in the summer, you won’t win.”

As they made strides over the summer, Posey made it a point to explain to the players how their dedication to the weight room was paying off.

“We pushed these kids and charted their progress,” Posey said. “Kids want to see how much they’re benching, squatting, deadlifting and power cleaning. If you’re not showing them how much stronger they’ve gotten, then you’re not doing your job as a coach.”

With more than double the wins from last year, Posey said the credit goes to the players and the assistant coaches for the team’s improvement.

“They made the commitment to being better than we were a year before,” Posey said. “They’re trying to play harder, play smarter and play with a purpose. You can play football and not be a football player, and I told them the other day that some of them were just playing football, but now they’ve become football players. There’s a big difference. 

“It’s nothing I’ve done, it’s a ‘we’ thing. It’s like a family: One person can’t keep a family going. It takes everyone. I don’t take credit for anything; I’m not that smart. I copy what other coaches have shown me and what coaches who have beaten me are doing.”

There’s still room to improve, however, and Posey said he wants to eventually build a football program rather than a football team. He cited Thursday’s opponent, West Lauderdale, as an example of what he would like to build at Choctaw Central.

“They’re well-disciplined, and that’s the difference between a football team and a football program,” Posey explained. “That’s what I told the administrators and the Tribe when I took the job: ‘Right now, we just have a team, and I want it to be a program where, when I leave, all you have to do is insert a coach and there won’t be a bunch of turnaround and turnovers.’”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Thursday at Choctaw Central.