‘Is this really happening?’ Remembering record football clash, Poplarville v. St. Stanislaus

Just before the Poplarville Football Machine whirred to life and before St. Stanislaus embarked on a decade of marked consistent success, there was The Game .

It was a 2012 matchup that pitted a freshmen-ladened and winless Rock-a-Chaws squad against a 2-5 Hornets team desperate to squeeze its way into the postseason; and yet the game’s memory still rests vividly in the minds of those who were there 12 years later.

Twenty four touchdowns and 162 points in four quarters of regulation football will have that effect. Poplarville escaped Bay St. Louis with an 82-80 win over St. Stanislaus on a night that could and has been described in any number of ways.

St. Stanislaus athletics statistician and historian and Sea Coast Echo reporter Joe Gex may have the most succinct way of putting it: “There was no defense played whatsoever.”

Gex has been on the sidelines charting plays for the Rock-a-Chaws for over 30 years. He was there with notebook in hand for the exhaustively electric battle between the Gabe Fertitta-coached Rocks and the Hornets helmed by Chris Teal.

St. Stanislaus set the national high school record for total offense with 937 yards and PHS’s 845 was third at the time. The combined 1,782 yards were also a record.

“The game was a statistician’s dream and a sportswriter’s nightmare,” Gex told the Sun Herald. “The game was one for the ages and the memory of it is ageless.”

For current Hornets head coach Jay Beech, it was an unorthodox way to get a major confidence boost. Beech was a first-year offensive coordinator for PHS at the time and was calling the plays for the Green and Black.

“There was a lot of pressure to score and score fast every time we had it,” Beech said. “No conservative play calls at all... We were just like, ‘wow, is this really happening?’”

His offense relied heavily on fullback Jiquan James, who had his own unforgettable day. He scored a 100 on a chemistry midterm hours before toting the ball 37 times and racking up a monstrous 401 yards and five touchdowns.

James led a team-wide ground attack that tallied an eye-popping 707 total rushing yards.

“(James) had the hot hand that night,” Beech said. “Nobody could tackle him. He was a step faster than everybody on the field. If they did get a hand on him, he broke tackles. He just had a memorable night.”

If anyone had a closer view than Gex or Beech, it was Tyler Allen. The now-West Virginia quarterbacks coach was a junior at SSC at the time and the team’s starting quarterback.

He led an offense that found the end zone three times to open the game before the Hornets ever ran a single play.

At the time, Teal and Beech thought the Rocks were kicking and recovering onside kicks after SSC’s first couple of scores. But that wasn’t entirely the case.

St. Stanislaus’ starting kicker went down with an injury the week prior and his replacement proved to be a key factor in the game’s outcome.

“We had a guy on the team who said he could kick, basically,” Allen said. “His name was Alexander Romano. He goes to squib kick and he hits their front line man and it bounces right back to us. We get the ball back and go down and score. We go to squib kick again and it happens again.”

Romano’s early luck didn’t outweigh the cost that came following the Rock-a-Chaws’ touchdowns. He missed the first extra point and it was bad enough for Fertitta to abandon the point after try altogether for the rest of the game.

St. Stanislaus went for two after 11 of its touchdowns and converted only four times. Even with a 60-49 halftime deficit — those 60 points still standing as a state record for a single half — the Hornets were able to close the gap thanks to six Rock-a-Chaw turnovers and successful PATs on 10 of 12 tries.

Allen was responsible for eight touchdowns himself in the back-and-forth affair, throwing for seven and rushing for another.

“It was like we were scoring touchdowns every time, but the score wasn’t going up, because we were just right back with them the whole time,” Allen said.

The 162 combined points stood as an MHSAA record for three years. It was eventually beaten by Olive Branch’s 87-86 win over DeSoto Central in 2015. But even that game needed three overtimes to best what the Hornets and Rocks accomplished in a mere four quarters.

The Rocks’ national yardage record was surpassed by just nine yards a year later by California’s Corona Centennial, but it still stands as a statewide record.

The battle was also a seminal moment in what was becoming a genuine rivalry between the two teams. It snapped the Rocks’ five-game winning streak in the series and was the second of four consecutive meetings decided by one score — which the two sides split two games apiece.

It also served as a turning point for both programs. Poplarville would reach the playoffs that year and has not missed a postseason since. Beech took over as program head in 2014, immediately won the team’s first district title in 20 years and have won six more since with 30 playoff wins and four South State titles.

“Me being the offensive coordinator, it helped me personally get belief from our school administrators when coach Teal decided to take a step down,” Beech said. “They put their trust in me to lead the program, so I think (that game) kind of helped out.”

St. Stanislaus finished the year 0-9, but had a roster full of eventual next-level talent. They were just young and inexperienced.

The Rock-a-Chaws won all 10 regular season games the very next season — including a low-scoring 48-41 win over Poplarville — and reached the third round of the playoffs.

St. Stanislaus allowed fewer points in five combined district games that year (81) than it did in the previous year’s race with the Hornets.

“What Gabe Fertitta put into place, the culture that he built there, it’s probably carried on for a long time,” Allen said.

The Rocks have been postseason bound every year since 2013 under four different head coaches since Fertitta. In that time the program has won four district titles and two South State championships.

When Beech is asked if he’d be OK with playing in another game similar to the 2012 thriller, his answer is conditional: “Only if we win.”

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