(In his response to city officials Tuesday, following Batesville Mayor Jerry Autrey’s proclamation of Tuesday, December 4 as “South Panola Tiger Football — 10th State Championship Day,” Head Coach Lance Pogue expressed appreciation for the hometown support and offered an overview of the value of the football program to the community and for the young athletes who participate. His remarks, in their entirety, follow.)

I really appreciate this, I wish I had our players and coaches here. Our state championship game was kind of symbolic of our whole season. We had a lot of ups and downs.

Obviously, a year ago we didn’t have the results that we’d like to have had. We had a great team in 2010, and the sad thing about football is that you can have a great team but when the season’s over you lose 18 to 20 starters, and all of a sudden that great team’s gone and it’s not as easy next time around. But it’s how you handle that and how you attack that.

So we came back this season with a hard-working attitude, kind of with a chip on our shoulder. We stepped out there and played two top 10 teams in the nation and it didn’t go our way. You know, you hear all the things out there: boy, they’ve gone under; it’s all over, and this and that. We chose to play people like that versus playing someone we could play and beat handily and really not know what we have, but our guys kept believing through all that after the month of September.

And then I had a personal issue that my dad passed away about five weeks ago. We all go through that. It was a tough time on me. I missed some time. My players and coaches just kept it going for us.
When that was over we hit the playoffs and something just happened. A spark happened in the playoffs and we just started getting better and better and better and went down to Madison two weeks ago and played our best game of the season, hands down, and really just destroyed Madison Central in every phase of the game.

Then we went to Jackson last week. Boy, that was a hard-fought game. If someone had told me we would turn the ball over five times and still win, we may have had to drug test them. But we still found a way.
The other team did to, but it was a hard-fought game and kind of symbolized our season. Our kids wouldn’t be denied. They weren’t going to give in at the end, even when it looked like it could be a little shaky.

A kid that had been kind of maligned the year before made a play to win the game, made an interception, a game-winning play that will make history from now on with our program and obviously with him. I’m speaking of Tevis Flowers. I’m so proud of him; I’m proud of all of them.

I’ll say this. In my experience since I’ve been here, people have been really, really nice to my family and me. I have found this to be: our football program is one thing that I know personally that draws this community together, whether it be our school, whether it be our town or whether it be our county. You look up in the stands in Jackson, we had a record-breaking crowd.

Now Brandon had a lot to do with that but I’ll say the reason why: They’re right there in metro Jackson; their first time.

We had a great crowd, a big-time crowd. You look up in the stands when it’s all over and everybody’s cheering; everybody’s excited. I know that’s a unifying thing.

Whether it be with your town business, national business, school business, whatever it may be, for whatever reason, high school football, and especially here in our state and in our community, it’s a drawing card. I just think it is so positive from a relationship standpoint. I’m just so proud we were part of that. You see a lot of happy people, and some of those people that kind of wrote us off a little bit early, you’d have been surprised — they were waving the banner the other night.

That’s the way it goes, but that’s fine and that’s good, but I appreciate this again. To win 10 state championships since 1993, we’ve played 14 times down there, won 10 in 19 years — it’s remarkable. Coach Willis Wright started this a few years ago in the early ‘90s, there have been three of us other coaches that have been part of state championships. I’ve been very blessed and fortunate, this is my fourth one as the head coach, and two years ago, obviously, won a national championship.

But I think there’s more yet to come. Hopefully we can find another one as we move forward, but the bottom line is that you win and you have fun, but I want to see these kids progress and graduate from here.
If this has made an impression in their life as part of  a football team to be a better person and have a foundation to develop as they mature and get older to make it in life, I’m proud to be a part of that. I can’t thank you enough for all of your support.