2015 High School Football Tour: Stop #35 – Booneville

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BOONEVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) — Momentum from the off-season will be the driving force for Booneville in 2015.

The Blue Devils are coming off a disappointing (5-6) season a year ago, but head coach Mike Mattox believes his team is well prepared to put last year behind them.

“I felt like we had the best spring here since I’ve been the head football coach,” Mattox said. “We had a lot of kids work extremely hard and accept roles that we gave them. This year’s ball club will be green as we start but hopefully everything works out and they’ll get better as the season rolls along.”

Booneville will indeed be young going into the 2015 season.

The Blue Devils graduated 12 seniors and return just five starters total on both sides of the ball from last year.

But coach Mattox truly believes his team chemistry will push the Devils forward in the new season.

“The biggest thing that’s exciting is how well our team got along,” Mattox said. “They pushed each other, they gave each other high five’s and really gelled as a team. Their work ethic in weights is great. We’ve had 35 kids here every night and that’s been a big plus.”

It’s a new season and a new division to look forward to in 2015: Booneville joins Alcorn Central, Belmont, Benton County, Kossuth and New Site in the restructured Region 1-3A this season.

With that new division comes the same expectations but new goals: Booneville has missed the playoffs just once in the last 21 years, and they don’t expect that to change this season.

“Number one we always want to make the playoffs,” Mattox said. “When Coach Drewry was here, that was always the first thing we wanted to do. With this team, we stress trying to get better than you were yesterday. In the spring, this group of kids did that and that’s all you can ever ask out of your kids.”

The spring time was a big talking point going into the new season for Mattox and the Blue Devils, and the hope is that will be the surge this team needs to make their way to the top in Class 3A in 2015.