That may be true, but the Nanih Waiya Warriors won the State Class 1A Football Championship. After a thrilling 21-18 win over the Hollandale Simmons Blue Devils, three-time champion, the Warriors stood strong. The Warriors sealed the deal with Little Austin Sanders, a sophomore cornerback weighing in at 155 lbs, with a pass intercept with just under two minutes left at the Nanih Waiya 29,-yard line. Sanders said that he knew they were coming his way, with his braces shining in the stadium lights. “The receiver ran a short in pattern. I stayed with him and turned around to see the ball. “All I had to do was hang on to it,” he said, and within minutes, he began one of the most wild celebrations of victory you could imagine. James Courtney, Nanih Waiya’s coach, tried to explain the significance of the win. Courtney stated, “When you get to the state championship games, you don’t want to be a pansy.” “When you reach this point, you want to be a giant. We did just that tonight. “We beat the giant.” Simmons is a Class 1A football player. Since Nov. 21, 2014, the Blue Devils have won 54 consecutive games. This is the most wins in national football. If you want to keep track, that was 1,470 days ago. Courtney shouted, “Can you believe that?” above the noise. Their players have never lost. They don’t know what it means to lose.” This is why so many Hollandale players felt helpless afterward. Nearly everyone wept. Coach Timothy James Johnson said, while hugging players after players, that he couldn’t praise enough the “amazing group of guys” he coaches. I am fully responsible for today’s events. It was a bad game. Johnson called them good plays. His men out-gained Nanih Waiya, 401-332. Nanih Waiya made more plays today. Oh, the difference a year can make. In the last year’s state championship match at Vaught Hemingway Stadium, Oxford, Nanih Waiya led Hollandale Simmons by 20-6. With 11 minutes remaining, the Blue Devils came back to win the game 22-20. The roles were reversed. Simmons players had a wild celebration. Nanih Waiya’s players wept and consoled one another. We apologise to the SEC for this, but Class 1A football is more. The team is supported by entire communities. Both sides are represented by players, who can also play on special teams. Courtney stated, “We have talked about this game almost every day since last year.” “We discussed it before and after each 100-yard sprint that we ran in the heat this year. We wanted to close the deal this year.” “We must have ran a million of those 100-yard wind sprints,” Coley Taylor, a wide receiver/defensive backup, said. We thought that we had let last year’s game slip by us. We got tired. We ran out gas. This was not something we were going to allow this to happen again. We ran those sprints because we didn’t want to let that happen. We didn’t lose this year because they were better than us. We came here to finish, and we did finish.” Hollandale led 18-14 at halftime. Coley Taylor and Shia Moore were the only two points in the second half. Moore, a halfback took Donovan Turner’s pitch and threw a touchdown pass to Taylor from 34 yards. It was fitting that the three players touched the ball during the winning touchdown. Turner, the game’s MVP, ran for 144 yards with a touchdown and threw 50 more. Moore ran for 106 yards with a touchdown, and threw for 34 yards. Taylor led Nanih Waiya receivers, with three catches of 79 yards and a touchdown. Turner, the quarterback, stated that “We remember the pain from last season.” “We were not going to allow that to happen again.”