The Charleston Tigers will duel the Heidelberg Oilers Friday for a state championship in Class 2A football.
The game will kick off at 4 p.m. at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium at Ole Miss.
The Tigers will be making their first back-to-back state title game appearances since suiting up for three in a row between 2014 and 2016, when they competed in Class 3A.
Click on Title To Read Document
Last year, Charleston lost 42-12 to Scott Central in the Tigers’ first 2A championship game, held at Southern Miss.
Overall, CHS is 1-6 in state title matches. The crown was bestowed in 2011 after a 34-8 rout of Hazlehurst. The Tigers have finished as state runners-up in 2005, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2022.
Fourth-year CHS head coach LaDon Taylor, who has been around for all of that, is keenly aware of the drought.
“It’s been a long time since we got the [state championship] we have,” he said Tuesday. “We’re hoping for that to change. ... My prayer is that we can get this done for the city of Charleston to show them how much we love them and appreciate them.”
While Taylor admitted it is a “good feeling” to win consecutive north half titles, he said, “We’re looking for that great feeling of finishing it off. We talked about last year how we wanted to be playing in the last football game of the season. We are in that game now, but it’s no good to just play in it. We need to finish.”
The coach said his team remembers “that feeling” last year when they walked off the field as state runners-up.
“Hopefully, that’s something that we will carry to ... maintain laser focus throughout this week and try to work on finishing the plan and taking care of the business at hand,” he added.
After last year’s loss in the state title game, Taylor said he and fellow coaches “went back to the drawing board” and made a few adjustments, including filling some holes on the offensive line caused by May graduation.
“For the most part, we did the best job that we could, and it was good enough to get us this far,” he noted. “We hope and pray that it will be enough to get us over the top this time and bring that gold ball back to the city. That is something that we really want to do. ... We’re almost there, and we’re putting our heart and soul into this to see if we can get this accomplished.”
Information about how to watch and listen to Friday's CHS game may be found here.
— * —
The Tigers are hot this year. At 12-2, they are winners of eight games in a row and 12 of 13 since suffering a narrow season-opening loss.
Charleston earned the 2A North State title in convincing fashion last week, with a 40-14 swatting of the 12-2 Union Yellowjackets.
Heidelberg, 11-3, is on a six-game win streak. The Oilers have won 10 of their last 11, including last week’s 16-6 victory over Raleigh in the 2A South State showdown.
Taylor said Heidelberg features “a very athletic group” of well-coached players.
This will be the Oilers’ first state title game in football.
“We’re up against a really good opponent, and we have to try to figure out how to get it done,” Taylor added.
One key ingredient, the coach noted, is the support of Charleston fans, whom he lauded for turning out in high numbers for last week’s north half game.
“The crowd was awesome,” he said. “We were very happy with the turnout.”
Taylor hopes to take that same advantage to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
“We want to see if we can have a really big family atmosphere at Oxford at the Vaught,” he said. “We want to lock the Vaught and have as many Charleston fans as we can have there. Hopefully, at the end of the fourth quarter, we can celebrate as a city ... like we did in 2011.”
— * —
CHS never trailed against Union, leading 14-0 at the close of the first quarter and 28-7 at the half before adding a pair of touchdowns in the third quarter to seal the deal.
Latese Edwards had TD runs of 1 and 33 yards, Dre Riley snared touchdown receptions of 50 and 38 yards from quarterback Devon Olive, and Marcus “Deuce” Flowers added a scoring run of 2 yards.
The Charleston defense got in on the scoring action, as well, with Kashwaun Drain blowing up a promising Union drive with an interception and 88-yard pick six.
Both Edwards and Flowers had a run for a two-point conversion in the game.
Statistically, Olive completed 12-of-15 passes for 200 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.
Riley had 10 receptions for 159 yards and a pair of TDs. Omar Wilson had one catch for 36 yards and Drain corralled one ball for 5 yards.
Flowers ran the football 23 times for 129 yards, Quentin Carter had 10 totes for 57 yards, Edwards carried twice for 34 yards and Olive had two runs for 4 yards.
Defensively, Montra Sanford posted 12 tackles — seven solos and five assists — to lead Charleston.
Carter had nine stops (five individuals and four assists), Flowers had seven tackles (six solos and one assist) and Kameron Andrews added six stops (three each of solos and assists). Drain and Omar Wilson had five total stops apiece while Timothy Kirk Jr. and Riley tacked on four each.
— * —
As a bonus, each $15 general admission ticket for Friday’s Charleston game will also entitle the bearer to stick around and watch (at no additional cost) the Class 6A title game pitting Grenada High against West Jones. That game kicks off at 7:30.
