#HSFT16: Stop No. 58 – Tupelo Golden Wave

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) — It was yet another trip to the playoffs for the 2015 Tupelo Golden Wave, but the team was bounced in the first round, finishing with a .500 record of 6-6.

Now heading into the 2016 season, the new look Golden Wave will look to fill some big shoes, most notably dual-threat quarterback Daniel Bristow.

“We did lose a lot of great players last year…we lost not only Daniel Bristow, but three guys on the defensive line, we lost several guys on the o-line…”, said head coach Trent Hammond.

“It is kind of a rebuilding year, we got a lot of young guys, we’ll be playing a lot of tenth and eleventh graders this year, but I’m excited about the chances that we’ve got and the guys that we’ve got on the field.”

Hammond said the quarterback battle has been competitive for day one and, “we came in with a three man rotation. Its kind of pushing back and forth from one day to the other.  One of them may have a lead one day, and a different one the next…trying to figure out who gives us the most consistent chance to win.”

While this year’s team is full of new faces, Hammond said the team’s youth hasn’t been an excuse in the offseason.

“These guys have worked really hard during the summer. We had 72 guys make their lifts, make all their lifts out of 93, that’s a tremendous amount of buy-in, so I like the idea that these kids are bought in and will do what we ask them to do”, said Hammond.

Expectations in Tupelo are playoffs or bust, but Hammond says his team’s mindset remains the same.

“We want to get to a win on that first Friday night. If you’ve ever been around me, we never set a goal as eight wins is good, or six wins is good, we want to win the next one”, said Hammond, “…just like in 2013 and a couple years before that, we’d have guys who’d come up and say ‘coach, I didn’t realize we won thirteen ball games’, because we didn’t focus on anything but the next ball game and I know that’s kind of coach cliché but I think we sell that over, we’re not worried about anything but the next, we don’t set a mark that this is successful, successful is winning the next one.”