Meridian High School’s Ray Stadium

UPDATED: This story has been updated to reflect that Meridian High School has won three state titles since the Mississippi High School Football Playoff was created in 1981.

The Meridian High School football program and coach Marcus Boyles came together at the right time, according to MHS athletic director Cheyenne Trussell.

MHS’s football team has been on the decline in recent years, as the Wildcats have failed to post a winning record since Calvin Hampton led them to a 10-4 season in 2016.

A 25-42 combined record under Hampton and John Douglass since then suggests that the Wildcats have not even been mediocre in a while, much less good enough to win a championship. This could be considered the darkest stretch to date for a MHS program that has experienced just 20 losing seasons since 1908, but the Wildcats have been mired in the mud in the past.

Many Wildcats fans remember Larry Weems, who coached MHS to 10 straight winning seasons from 2006 to 2015, for leading his team to a state title in 2008. Weems is one of the great coaches in MHS history, but he likely could not have accomplished such success as quickly as he did if predecessor Ed Stanley had not laid the groundwork by lifting the Wildcats from their second-straight 3-8 season in 2002 to an 11-4 record in 2005.

Now, the Wildcats have a new face at the helm in Boyles. Like Weems, Boyles is a hall-of-fame-caliber coach who can help the Wildcats sustain success once they are competing for championships again. The major question remaining after Boyles was announced as MHS head coach in January relates to whether he can turn around an under-performing football program.

MHS’s new football coach has a track record that shows he can win with previously successful teams, but this is the first time in Boyles’ head coaching career that he has taken over a team with a losing record the season before he arrived.

Boyles is already one of Mississippi’s winningest high school football coaches. He has a career record of 294-71 between his stops at Taylorsville, Pearl, Wayne County and Petal since 1993, and his 2018 Petal squad is the only one of his teams that failed to secure a winning record.

Boyles led his teams to five state titles in 27 seasons as a head coach, while Meridian has won just three since the Mississippi High School Football Playoff was created in 1981. He was inducted into the Mississippi Association of Coaches Hall of Fame, which Weems was inducted into in 2016, last month for his success at the high school level.

“The good lord has blessed me,” Boyles said on his induction. “I’ve been very fortunate to work with some very good administrators that had the same vision as I had as far as what we want the athletic program to look like, the football team to look like, and I’ve been very blessed to have great assistant coaches and great players to work with.”

Boyles, a son of educators whose father was a coach before him, first got into coaching in 1989 as a football assistant at Florence High School because he loved playing sports growing up. Over time, he found that he made a good coach because he has a knack for connecting with kids.

He has not coached since the 2020 season, but Boyles said he decided to coach at Meridian because he missed the relationships with coaches and players. A true competitor at heart, he also missed coaching under the Friday night lights.

“You see kids playing for the fun of it, because they love the game,” Boyles said on his devotion to Mississippi high school football. “They’re not getting paid to do it, they’re not getting their school paid for or anything like that. They just play the game because they love the game and they love to compete.”

Trussell was primarily looking for a proven coach, and he got one of the most proven coaches in the state to come to town. Trussell said he has known Boyles for almost 30 years, and Meridian is getting someone who is an even better person than a coach.

“The last three to five years, the Wildcats’ program has kind of faltered a little, so we wanted to get back to that tradition of old,” Trussell said. “We wanted the best, we went after the best, and we were very fortunate to land the best at Meridian High.”

Trussell said Boyles can provide top-tier professional development for all the coaches in the Wildcats’ football program, and the quality of instruction he is already providing MHS athletes with is second to none. Even with a hall-of-fame coach and some solid young athletes, it could take years for the Wildcats to truly return to their winning ways.

“It’s a process, and we know that it’s a process,” Trussell said. “Over time, it will be built back.”

As he has done at past stops throughout his career, Boyles will look to improve the Wildcats’ program by pouring into the football programs at the middle schools that feed into the high school program. He said improvement at the high school level will start with weight training and solid offseason programs at Northwest Middle School and Magnolia Middle School.

“I love seeing a young man come into our program as a seventh grader, and then just to watch him develop and see what kind of young man he becomes as a senior,” Boyles said. “I think it’s got to start with junior high, and I think we’ve got two strong middle schools, and we need to keep that. We’ve got some really good coaches down there, good administrators that are supporting us.”

The Wildcats could shock the Mississippi High School football world this season under Boyles’ guidance, or success could still be a ways down the road for MHS football. Time will tell if a struggling MHS football program and a proven coach with a plan for success truly came together at the right time.

“I’m just very honored and blessed to have had a very successful career, and to have been able to coach these young men,” Boyles said. “It’s just a privilege. It’s an honor.”