#HSFT19 Stop #58 — Tupelo Golden Wave

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) —  One of the winningest eras in Tupelo football comes to a close with graduation of special talent like Jaquerrious “J-Rock” Williams, Jordan Jernigan, and Stephon McGlaun.

New opportunities open for new names to step up for the Golden Wave, and head coach Trent Hammond says he has a roster full of guys chomping at the bit to make plays on Friday night.

“We’ve got some kids that have sat and waited their turn…they haven’t got a lot of reps in the past because of the guys that were in front of them,” Hammond said, “now it’s their turn, and I think that’s our whole team as a whole is it’s full of guys that have waited their turn. Almost like a redshirt process, that they’ve sat here and now it’s their time to go play.”

Tupelo will turn to Jacob Weir and Ole Miss-commit Jaycob Horn to lead it’s high-flying offense in 2019.

“We can’t ask our quarterback Jake Weir to do what Stephon did,” Hammond said, “we have to ask him to be himself. A lot of that is on us to modify and adapt what we’re doing to our personnel.”

“We always will have the talent, but because we lost a couple of people, they think that we’re under the radar, but we’re still here,” Horn said.

It’s unfamiliar territory for Tupelo this year. The Golden Wave believing they’re the ones who are flying under the radar.

This group is embracing the underdog role, and the expectations aren’t changing.

“We knew it coming into this offseason, that we weren’t going to be thought of as the best team, that people were going to count us out,” senior long snapper Hayes Hammond said, “so we just have to play hard, and do our thing.”

Tupelo kicks off 2019 inside ‘The Flood Zone’, taking on South Panola.