Veteran sportswriter and high school football expert Robert Wilson is doing the Mississippi Scoreboard predictions column each week during the high school football season on teams from Hinds, Madison, and Rankin County. Wilson had a 274-59 record (82.3 percent) last season.
By Robert Wilson
Acadiana Christian, La. (0-0) at East Rankin Academy (0-0)
First-year East Rankin coach Teddy Dyess has never had a losing season in his 23 years as a head coach.
East Rankin hasn’t had a winning season since 2012.
Dyess will start on his attempt to extend his personal streak and end East Rankin’s streak Friday when East Rankin opens the season against Acadiana Christian, La., at East Rankin in Pelahatchie.
Dyess’ resume is outstanding.
Dyess – one of the winningest high school football coaches in Mississippi history – begins his first year at East Rankin after being an assistant coach at Yazoo County for one season. Dyess came to Yazoo County after being the head coach at Clinton Christian Academy for one year. Before Clinton Christian, Dyess spent 31 seasons as coach in the MHSAA, the last 22 as a head coach.
Dyess, 57, has a 231-59 record, a 79.7 winning percentage, the third highest winning percentage of any coach in Mississippi history with more than 200 wins. Only former National Coach of the Year and Mississippi Hall of Fame member Ricky Black (who won 401 games and had an 83.3 winning percentage in 40 seasons and retired in 2020) and former New Hope and Hamilton coach Jimmie Moore (who won 205 games and had a 79.9 winning percentage) is better.
Dyess ranks sixth in wins among active coaches in Mississippi.
Dyess has won six state championships, two as a player at Bassfield, one as an assistant coach at Madison Central, two as a head coach at Lumberton and one as a head coach at Magee in 2020 when he went 12-0 and defeated Noxubee County 49-26 for the MHSAA Class 3A state title.
The closest Dyess came to a losing season was in 2016 when he was 6-6 at Philadelphia. He has won at least 10 games in 15 of his 22 seasons as head coach, averaging 10.6 wins per season. He went five consecutive years (2009-13) without losing a region game at Philadelphia. Dyess has had two undefeated seasons and five more seasons, including four consecutive seasons at Philly, with only one loss.
Dyess was 13-9 in his two years at Ridgeland, 6-5 in 2021 and 7-4 in 2022, and 6-5 at Clinton Christian in 2023.
East Rankin finished 3-8 last season under coach Jonathan Worrell, who left to become the offensive coordinator at Starkville Academy.
The top returning players are rising senior offensive-defensive lineman Gage Crapps, senior offensive-defensive lineman Harrison Smith, senior running back Brandon Loper, senior inside linebacker Grayson Williams, senior defensive back Taylor Woods, and senior running back-defensive back Aiden Carlisle..
In addition, speedy sophomore running back-defensive back and Pelahatchie High transfer Ethan Butler should contribute this season.
Rising junior quarterback Luke Wesson – son of former Brandon High star Barry Wesson who was drafted out of high school and made it to the major leagues in 2002 – passed and ran for 1,671 yards and 17 touchdowns last season but transferred to Hartfield Academy.
The last winning season for East Rankin was a 7-5 season in 2012 when the Patriots lost to Heritage in the first round of the MAIS Class AAA, Division II playoffs. East Rankin also finished 7-7 in 2015 but hasn’t won more than four games in a season since then, winning only 15 games in the last seven years, an average of 2 wins per year.
Acadiana Christian, located in Lafayette, finished 1-10 last season, plays as an independent and plays many homeschool teams. A friend of Dyess who coaches at a high school in Baton Rouge told him about Acadiana and said they might want to play.
East Rankin and the Dyess era get off to a good start.
East Rankin 28, Acadiana Christian 6.
Ravenwood, Tenn., High (0-0) at MRA (0-0)
Madison-Ridgeland Academy head coach Herbert Davis has the definite advantage on coaching experience over Ravenwood offensive coordinator Hayden Davis (Herbert’s son) in the first Davis Bowl.
Herbert Davis has won 246 games and five state championships (three at MRA, two at Brookhaven Academy and one at Pillow Academy) as he starts his 29th season as a head coach. He is the only football coach in Mississippi history to take five schools (MRA, Brookhaven Academy, Pillow Academy, Heritage Academy and Winston Academy) to state championship games. Davis has won 112 games in 12 seasons at MRA.
The younger Davis will be making his high school coaching debut as an offensive coordinator, after coaching the safeties last year in his first year Ravenwood.
Hayden was a starting quarterback at MRA, but unfortunately his playing career was cut short by many injuries, playing only one game his junior season and missing his entire senior season. Despite all that, Copiah-Lincoln Community College signed him, and he was All-State as a sophomore. He signed with Delta State, but injuries got him again. Davis was a student assistant coach for two years at Delta State and after graduating came back to coach linebackers on MRA’s state championship team in 2021. Then, he was defensive coordinator for Lamar School in Meridian and head coach Jacob Land, son of MRA head of school Termie Land, in 2022 and 2023.
This is one of the toughest openers for MRA in school history. Ravenwood was the Tennessee public school Class 6A (the largest class in the state) runner-up last season and is ranked No. 8 in Tennessee this season by MaxPreps. MRA is ranked No. 11 in Mississippi.
Ravenwood 28, MRA 14
Jackson Prep (0-0) vs. Battle Ground, Tenn. Academy (0-0) at St. George’s, Tenn., School in Collierville, Tenn.
Prep lost 36 seniors to graduation and only returns three starters from last year’s team, which lost to Hartfield Academy 19-14 in the MAIS Class 6A state championship game.
Prep was so close to its first perfect season since 2017 when Hartfield came back and scored with about a minute to go and ended Prep’s 12-game winning streak and beat Prep for the second straight year in the championship game. Prep had defeated Hartfield 51-45 during the regular season.
Prep is missing outstanding players who are now freshman in college like quarterback Billy Puckett (Mississippi State), offensive linemen Cole Allen (Duke) and Matthew Parker (Vanderbilt), wide receiver-defensive back Major Quin (Air Force), and linebacker Tre Bryant (playing baseball at the University of California).
Battle Ground, located in Franklin, a suburb of Nashville, is ranked No. 6 in Tennessee this season by MaxPreps and finished 11-3 and lost in the Division II Class AA championship game last season.
Prep is ranked No. 12 in Mississippi.
Senior running back Thomas Hewitt Oswalt, senior kicker-punter Eli Adams and senior wide receiver Aiden Rowe are players to watch for Prep. Oswalt had 723 rushing yards and seven TDs last season, Adams is considered one of the top specialists in Mississippi, and Rowe is one of the top receivers returning in the MAIS.
Battle Ground has two players rated in the Top 55 in the Class of 2026 in Tennessee by MaxPreps – 6-3, 260-pound defensive lineman and Columbia University commitment Nate Fleming (rated No. 48) and quarterback and Columbia University commitment Kaedyn Marable (rated No. 55).
Prep coach Doug Goodwin and Battle Ground coach Bobby Bentley (a former national high school coach of the year in 2005 while coaching in South Carolina) coached at Auburn together. They agreed to play in Memphis so neither team would have to travel six hours. They will play next year in Memphis also.
Goodwin has won 268 games in his 31-year head coaching career, including a 34-6 record entering his fourth season at Prep. He led Prep to a 12-1 record and the MAIS Class 6A state title in his first season at Prep two years ago. Goodwin brought the Patriots back from the most losses since the first year of the school in 1970 (an 8-5 record in 2022). He won 234 games in 27 seasons in Alabama, is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and was the first football coach in Alabama to take three different schools to state championship games. Goodwin led Demopolis to an undefeated season and a state title and set a state record with 761 points in 2008. He also had four state runner-up finishes in Alabama.
Although Prep lost a lot of players, history shows that Prep can have a great season this year. Former Prep coach Ricky Black – a member of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and former national coach of the year – lost 32 seniors in 2013 after winning a state title and followed it up with another state title in 2014.
Battle Ground 28, Jackson Prep 14.
In other games (winners in bold):
Canton Academy at Indianola Academy
Carroll Academy at Central Hinds Academy
Christ Covenant School at Ben’s Ford, La.
Discovery Christian at St. Aloysius
Madison St. Joseph at Cathedral
