'The sweetest of all': St. James football rides team chemistry to first-ever AHSAA state title
AUBURN — This season, the St. James football team put on impromptu punt, pass and kick competitions after practices.
Even as the seasons changed, the temperatures dropped and the sky started going dark at 5 p.m., a group of Trojans would linger on Carlisle Field, booting and throwing the ball around instead of going home.
"They're enjoying football and enjoying each other," coach Jimmy Perry said Monday. " ... They're enjoying the fruits of winning."
After St. James beat Thomasville in the Class 3A quarterfinals two weeks ago, Perry said the 2022 Trojans were special because they simply wanted to keep playing. They wanted to practice on Thanksgiving. They were having too much fun for their playoff run to end anywhere short of Jordan-Hare Stadium.
All of this is to say that the Trojans weren't the type to care about being underdogs in Thursday's AHSAA state championship game against powerhouse Piedmont. Their team spirit wouldn't allow it.
"We just take it like everybody's doubting us," offensive lineman Connor Owens said Monday. "We're going there to show them that St. James is the real deal."
And show them they did, with a 45-28 win against the defending state champion Bulldogs for the first title in St. James football history.
The Trojans (13-2) had never been past the quarterfinals before this season. Piedmont (12-3) had been to six Super 7s since 2009, coming out victorious in five. But on Monday, Perry stressed the obvious: "It's just the teams that are here now."
Thursday wasn't Perry's first time in a state championship game. He won in 1986 as Robert E. Lee's offensive coordinator and returned to win back-to-back titles in 1991 and 1992. As head coach seven years later, he led the Generals, who went 4-6 during the regular season, on a dream run to the 6A title game, where they fell to Clay-Chalkville in overtime.
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"I've been blessed," Perry said Thursday. "... To win this one, it was the sweetest of all of them."
When Perry thinks of the 1986 Lee team, the first in Alabama high school football history to go 15-0, he thinks of their remarkable chemistry. "They knew that everybody had their back," he said. "And they knew nobody was going to let them lose." This season's Trojans, he said, rank right up there with them.
Even when St. James went into halftime trailing 20-10, it stayed calm. It made defensive adjustments, putting more defenders in the box to stop last season's 3A Back of the Year, Jack Hayes. Offensively, the Trojans felt good about what they were doing — they just needed to hit some more deep shots.
Staying the course worked wonders. KJ Jackson threw the first of his Super 7-record five touchdown passes just 48 seconds into the second half. Hayes gained just 73 yards and completed two of 16 passes after the break. Freshman lineman Jimmy Dickens danced up and down the sideline, waving a towel in his right hand to pump up the crowd. St. James' student section brought the noise and didn't quiet down until after the trophy presentation.
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Instead of playing like a plucky underdog, the Trojans had Piedmont on its heels for the entirety of the last 24 minutes. It seemed a testament to their unselfish attitude: play together, play for one another and have fun doing it.
"Going back to Pee Wee, we had basically the same group of guys," said running back Cosner Harrison. "We really didn't have that different of a team. We won the championship in Pee Wee and in middle school. Coming up through high school, we just had that bonding. All four years, all the games, we worked so hard. To finally win one and all of our work's paying off, it feels amazing."
Jacob Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com, by phone at 334-201-9117 and on Twitter @Jacob_Shames.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: AHSAA football: Team chemistry leads to state title for St. James
