VICTORY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY EAGLES

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — A perennial powerhouse in 8-man brought it all home in 2014.

It took five long years, but Victory Christian were State Champions once again last season. The Eagles have been a perennial powerhouse in Alabama’s Christian Football Association and now they have a new challenge: going and winning again with a new team.

“We have some young guys we look to make contributions this year,” head coach Chris Hamm said. “I don’t want to say we’re starting over but we’re trying to fill gaps with seniors who have departed.”

Coach Hamm said one of the more important things going into 2015 was focusing on the team at hand and not looking back at past accomplishments.

“Last year happened and it was a great year for us,” Hamm said. “We were happy with it but we don’t want to gauge this year off of last year. It’s a different team with different competition. Everybody else had seniors that graduated. Just take this season as its own season and try to continue to build and not compare. You can get in trouble if you start comparing year to year.”

VCA will look a bit different in 2015: senior stars Anthony Sharp, Cody Bolton and Bo McCrary have all graduated. That means a new crop of talent will have to step up and coach Hamm hopes his team will lean on their power in the trenches.

“I think our offensive line will be pretty good this year,” Hamm said. “We have one returning starter and another guy that will step in that got a good bit of playing time last year. We will have to depend on our running game this year and hopefully we will develop an offense line that will be a strength for us.

“Of course, we’re strong at quarterback. Reed Fulgham has been there for a couple years and we feel like he will do a good job leading us.”

Victory Christian will start their State Title defense on the road at Tabernacle on August 28th before coming home to host New Life Christian and Cahawba Christian the following two weeks.