#HSFT18: Stop No. 40 – Oak Hill Academy

WEST POINT, Miss. (WCBI) — Oak Hill Academy looks for its first division title in school history.

Experience returns for the Raiders with twelve returning starters including a talented defense that pitched three shutouts last season.

“We’ve got the guys,” said head coach Jason Craven. “We got the intensity. We’ve got the strength. We are just waiting on our chance just to be able to get together, and put it together, and mesh it together, and see what we can do with it this season.”

Defense wins championships, and for the Oak Hill Academy Raiders they are looking to do just that in 2018.

“The thing I’m looking forward to most is defense,” said junior linebacker Jaden Craven. “Last year we had I think three or four shutouts. We have most our core returning on defense.”

“We had probably one of the best defenses in our conference last year,” said senior fullback Ethan Bryan. “We shut out just about everybody, and didn’t allow any points. This year we are looking forward towards mixing it up with the offense and hopefully doing a lot more things, and running the ball and scoring more points.”

The Raiders finished 6-4 last season, but fell in the first round of the playoffs.

Coach Craven enters his fourth season in leading the program, and the last three years his team hasn’t been past the first round of the playoffs.

The team wants to change that this season.

“We want to win the district,” said senior kicker Grayson Easterling. “And advance in the playoffs. I think game goals we want to score more points than we did last year. We had a good defense and good offense, but we want to do better than that.”

“We want to win a district championship,” Coach Craven said. “We lost in the first round. Every time we got in the playoffs since I’ve been at Oak Hill, we’ve lost in the first round. We want to do more than that. Do more than first round. That’s just kind of a milestone for our program.”

Last season, Oak Hill fell one game short from winning the school’s first division title.

Coach Craven says this year the division is wide open for anyone to have a chance.

“I think we have just as much of a chance as any of the rest of them,” Coach Craven said. “That’s really the crazy thing about our conference. All of them have a shot. We are so even across the board.”

Oak Hill Academy opens the season at home on August 17th against Deer Creek.