Once Senatobia got first-and-goal on the Columbia 6-yard line Saturday in the Class 4A State Championship, I squatted down and started picking at the rubber pellets embedded in the turf at The Rock.
As I looked down and watched the black pellets slip through my fingers, I started running through the scenarios in my head. If Columbia does get the ball back, will it have enough time to put together a game-winning drive? I mean, it couldn’t end like this. This was their year — the Wildcats were meant to win state.
Fast forward a few minutes and it’s fourth-and-goal at the Columbia 4. Senatobia was running kicker Ben Thompson, who hadn’t missed an extra point in the game, onto the field for a chip-shot 20-yard field goal — the same distance as the three PATs he drilled in the first half. I was on the home sideline right around the 1-yard line and zoomed in on the holder just in case Columbia broke through to block the kick — I couldn’t miss that picture. Off Thompson’s foot, I thought he made it. Even as I watched it sail past the field goal posts and into the net, I thought it was good.
From the angle I was at, I couldn’t see whether it had gone left or right. It just looked like a solid kick. I turned my camera back towards where Thompson kicked it and saw the Wildcats running off the field in celebration. In that moment, I was in shock. Shocked that he missed it, shocked that Columbia was about to kneel out the clock and shocked that the right team was going to be hoisting the gold ball trophy.
As a journalist, I’m not supposed to have any sort of bias. And when it comes time for two of Marion County’s teams to play each other, I don’t. I’m not from here and don’t have any allegiances to any of the schools. But I do root for them when they play any other team outside of Marion County. While it’s more fun to cover a team that wins, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about the relationships I have with the coaches, with the players, with the administrators and with everyone else associated with the programs that I talk to on Friday nights or throughout the week.
There may not be any person in Marion County more connected to all four football programs than myself because I’m there with them from the spring to summer workouts and all through the fall. I follow many of the players on Twitter — primarily to stay up to date with scholarship offers — and I talk to each of the coaches about a lot more than just their teams.
And the bottom line is I couldn’t be more proud of the Columbia Wildcats winning their first state title since 1982. It’s been a long time coming since Chip Bilderback became the head coach. Each of the past three years, I went into the postseason thinking they were going to get it done.
This year, despite believing this was the most talented Columbia team I’ve personally seen yet, I was cautious in my prediction. I wanted the Wildcats to win state, but I needed them to show me they could get it done on the big stage. After they completely destroyed Poplarville in October, I flipped my pick in my second round of predictions in this column.
Since then, my confidence in Columbia never wavered. I believed that if the Wildcats didn’t beat themselves, they would find a way to get it done. And that’s exactly what they did — they found a way. Sure, you could point to the missed field goal by Senatobia as being the reason Columbia won, but you can’t point to that without also pointing out Columbia’s goal-line stand that led to that kick. Any point that could be made has a counterpoint to it.
What it really boils down to is who the better team is and who wants it more. There’s no doubt in my mind that Columbia was both the better team and the squad that wanted it more. How else could you explain a team winning a game that it trailed in at halftime and didn’t pick up a first down in the second half? Good teams win games they’re supposed to. Great teams — teams that are immortalized with something like a state championship — find a way to win when all the odds are against them. That’s exactly what Columbia did Saturday.
Hats off to Bilderback, the entire coaching staff, all the players and everyone else involved in the Columbia football program. The right team won.
Joshua Campbell is managing/sports editor of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him via email at joshuacampbell@columbianprogress.com or call (601) 736-2611.
