Life is much different for Pat Byrd this season than it has been for the last three decades.
The longtime public school coach is embarking on a new journey this season as he was hired by Winston Academy to be the next head coach this season. He had just finished off eight seasons as the head man at Saltillo and produced three winning seasons from 2012-14 at a school that had traditionally been at the bottom of the barrel in north Mississippi.
Before that, Byrd was leading the Amory Panthers for 10 seasons, following up the success of his good friend Bobby Hall from the late 1990’s. To say that this year will be different would be an understatement, but Byrd is excited for the challenge.
“I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to welcome myself and my family,” Byrd said of WA. “It has been different. You go from working from 80 to 100 players to about 30 and the coach is asked to do a lot more things around the school and the program, but it’s kind of refreshing. You get back to the way it was when you first started to come up and that’s helped me.”
Not long after Byrd first started to come up through the coaching ranks, WA was the class of private school football. The Patriots were the first team in the state to win four-straight state championships from 1997-2000. From Mark Hudspeth to Nick Brewer and Wyatt Rogers, WA was hauling in big name coaches and players and putting out win after win.
Since those state championships, only twice have the Patriots been to a north state championship when Brian Sims led them there in consecutive seasons in 2006 and ’07. The program hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2011 and many of the players weren’t even born when Winston last won a state title.
Byrd and his staff is trying to get back to what made the Patriots so feared years ago.
“The first thing you’ve got to do is work and they’ve done that,” Byrd said. “As far as the history goes, you’ve got to tell them about it. What they hear is what they believe, and we’ve got to be repetitive with it. As far as expectations, Id rather be at a place that has them than one that doesn’t. You want to be at a place that wants to be good.”
While the numbers aren’t impressive with only 35 players on the team this year, Byrd said the determination and the willingness to work to get better has been through the roof.
Offensively, he’s trying to build a culture as Sims has returned to lead that unit as an assistant coach. There are some athletes that he feels he needs to get the ball in their hands and he wants to keep defenses off balanced.
“We’re going to be very multiple,” Byrd said of the offense. “We want to be able to establish the run and also do some play action off of it. We have smart kids that can pick up some concepts. Everything starts with the quarterback and we’re asking Luke Dempsey to do some things. He throws the ball well but sometimes he thinks too much so we need him to be able to use his instincts as well.”
The defensive side of the ball is where Byrd wants to put his touch on things. He likes what that unit brings to the table as well and feels that with everyone on the same page, things could go well.
“We’re not going to wow anybody with size, but I think we have decent size. The main thing is that we want to run to the football with our hair on fire,” Byrd said. “We won’t overmatch many teams this year so we’ll play zone with our guys.”
If the Patriots are to get back to where they want to be and into the playoffs, the road to get there won’t be easy.
Non-conference games against Copiah Academy and defending AAA state runners up Indianola are especially brutal. That’s before they even enter league play with Starkville Academy, Heritage Academy and Leake Academy coming down the rails.
Byrd will be ready for it and he said his players will be as well.
“As a football coach if you’re not excited this time of year, something is wrong,” Byrd said. “You just want to see your kids compete against somebody else and get some film on your team. It hasn’t become a grind yet, but it will in November and we’ll be ready for it.”
