Winona High School starts its 2022 season on the road against the Choctaw County Chargers Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Ackerman.
“The two schools are only about 45 minutes apart, and it’s been a rivalry game way before I got to Winona,” said WHS head coach Joey Tompkins. “They have a really big senior class this season. We played these kids when they were all seventh, eighth and ninth graders, and they handled us pretty well.
“We saw their film from last week’s scrimmage game against Leake Central. They pretty much did everything we expected. I don’t look for them to make a bunch of wholesale changes for this week.”
Winona won last year’s meeting, 35-19. The Tigers lead the all-time series 5-3 and have won the last three meetings.
The Tigers played Senatobia High School in a scrimmage contest last Friday at Oxford High School. Winona came out on top 21-18.
“We had good and bad things happen during the game,” said Tompkins. “We stopped their run game, but we gave up too many big plays in the passing game. They scored on 70- and 60-yard pass plays, and they had another long pass that got them down to the five-yard line. We were just not in the right place at the right time. We had a blown coverage on one of the plays. These are things than can’t happen in a real game.
“We did have a pick-six, and we moved the ball well on offense. We had a couple of bad snaps and a few penalties that hurt us. We moved the ball well when we went with tempo.”
The Tigers are breaking in new quarterback Chase Richardson. He played the position as a ninth grader, but moved to receiver as a sophomore. The junior is replacing Jekeyvion Burnley, who is now at Northeast Mississippi Community College.
“Chase did fine in the scrimmage game. It helps that he played quarterback as a freshman,” added Tompkins.
“We have two guys working at running back to replace Deriaun (Townsend). Danarius Robinson and Zaishun Nash played last season, so we know what we have in both of them. Danarius was on the field a good bit, and Zaishun got to play late in games.”
Robinson ran for 507 yards on 56 carries and scored eight times last season. Nash had 234 yards and scored four touchdowns on 48 carries. Richardson was Winona’s leading receiver with 25 receptions for 391 yards and five touchdowns.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Tompkins said. “We’ve got to block better up front, and we need to work on our passing game. We also need to get in better shape. We don’t do a ton of running, but we let practices get us in playing shape.”
