2025 High School Football Tour Stop #29: Winston Academy
LOUISVILLE, MS (WCBI) – It took five overtimes to decide the fate of the 2024 Winston Academy Patriots. The team lost their first playoff game, but also most of their seniority. Pat Byrd’s group is only returning six starters from that team in 2025 and is setting the stage for many young players to jump into major roles this season.
“You can take your time and kind of milk them along or you can throw them in the fire. And we’re going to have to throw them in the fire pretty quickly,” Byrd said. “With the schedule we’ve got those first 5 or 6 games are going to be pretty challenging for us so we’ve got to try to develop a little bit of depth, and where we don’t really have depth, we’ve got to mascaraed some depth so guys having to do multiple things, if they have that ability, so I’m interested to see where we can get.”
The Patriots know that their inexperience will show at times, but Byrd believes that the team should focus on getting better each day, one practice at a time.
“We want improvement, and improvement can come in a lot of different ways,” Byrd said. “We want to be better today than we were yesterday. As long as they’ll come with that mindset, not look down the schedule and worry about what’s going to happen in October, take care of right now and take care of July and August. You can’t worry about the ultimate goal. You just have to take care of what’s in front of you.”
Some players may lack experience, but they certainly don’t lack heart. The Patriots are committed to improvement and have shown their commitment to Byrd’s program this summer.
“We have a lot of pride with this team right now,” running back Beau Boatner said. “Last year, we had a lot of seniors that played; this year we’ve got a lot of guys coming up, stepping up, and taking roles.”
“We’re going to have to have everyone stay healthy,” wide receiver Jayson McMillen said. “Right now, we’ve got two people injured, and we just can’t have anybody else getting injured. We can’t lose anybody.”
“If we’re going to be competitive, we’ve got to have everybody involved, so they’ve kind of put their feet on the ground and got after it this summer, and we’re looking forward to it,” Bryd said.
Winston Academy will begin its season on August 22nd against Pillow Academy.
