Picayune football achieves perfection, beats West Point to win 5A state championship

Picayune accomplished a generational first for South Mississippi under the Hattiesburg lights on Friday.

Equipped with a brazen target on the backs of their maroon-and-white jerseys as reigning 5A state champions, the Maroon Tide swept their schedule and capped the first undefeated season by a Coast school in more than 30 years by defending their title against West Point.

Picayune used a dominant second half to outlast the Green Wave, 31-21. Game MVP and Oregon commit Dante Dowdell capped his illustrious high school career with a 190-yard performance on the ground that featured three trips to the end zone.

Picayune joins the 1987 Pascagoula team as South Mississippi’s only schools to go undefeated with a state championship win.

“It’s so hard to get here,” Picayune coach Cody Stogner said after the game. “It involves so much luck and work and effort, so it’s just so sweet... since (our players) left year last year, they had it on their mind that they wanted to come back and they wanted to do it again. They did exactly what they said they were going to do.”

Much like last year, Picayune had to fight back from a halftime deficit to earn the Golden Football. Despite controlling time of possession and rushing for more than 200 first-half yards, the Green Wave led 14-9 at the break thanks to touchdown passes of 41 and 86 yards.

Picayune averaged nine yards per play in the second half, though, and the dagger came late in the third quarter on a rare pass play.

Quarterback Brady Robertson found Darrell Smith short over the middle and watched as he broke three tackles on his way to an 80-yard touchdown that put the Maroon Tide up 24-14.

“When there’s a play to make, if I need to be there, I’ll be there,” Smith said. “I always tell coach, whenever he needs me, I’ll be there. They needed me and I made a play. We worked so hard. Blood, sweat and tears for this... God was with us.”

Still needing one more stop after going up 31-21 with a 37-yard rushing score from Dowdell, the defense came through with one of the biggest plays of the game.

Safety Damarius Magee forced the only turnover of the game, knocking the ball free from West Point’s Kahnen Daniels and recovering it himself.

It was a crucial play from a defender who, unlike many others on the roster, was fighting for his first championship.

“This is my first ring, the emotions are everywhere,” Magee said. “I want to cry, but I ain’t going to cry in front of everybody.”

Magee said the Green Wave were “running the same two plays” and used the sideline film to zero in on West Point’s option attack.

“Our guys didn’t freak out,” Stogner said. “They just kept fighting and fighting. We got into halftime and you could see the look in their eyes, there was no panic at all.”

It helped to have what felt like the entire town of Picayune forming a maroon wall at The Rock, creating a deafening advantage in key moments.

“It’s because of these kids, you know,” Stogner said. “That’s why (the fans) are here. What they do is just amazing, how they’ve got the whole community behind them. It’s almost like a movie, I think the whole town was shut down. You probably could’ve robbed a bank in Picayune tonight if you wanted to.”

Picayune is the first Coast team to win back-to-back championships since Moss Point in 1996 and ‘97. The Maroon Tide will take their deeply talented roster to the 6A level next year in search of South Mississippi’s first-ever title in that class.