Cougars try to keep winning on road

If Jackson Central-Merry football fans could get into a time machine and go back 20 years to the 2004 season, they’d see a couple of things that are relevant to this year’s edition of the Cougars.

First, they’d see senior starting lineman Erit Turner helping lead the team and learning to lead before going on to college at Memphis and coming up through the ranks of assistant coaches at North Side and University School of Jackson before getting the nod to lead the football rebirth of JCM in 2021.

Something else they’d see is the last JCM team to start a season with wins in their first two games.

The program took a downturn a couple years later and never fully recovered before closing in 2016, but before that, the Cougars dropped their opening matchup with Germantown, so a 2-0 JCM team in football hasn’t happened since … until last Friday night when the Cougars beat South Side 30-16.

Getting back to the future in 2024, Daveon Johnson, Jonas Patterson and Jaylen Young are all seniors on this JCM squad who’ve been with Turner the entire time since the school made its return in ‘21.

They’ve went through two years of playing a mostly junior varsity schedule on the road from Middle Tennessee to Arkansas with one home game at the old football field at the University of Memphis at Lambuth where Madison Academic plays its soccer games now.

They went through their junior season, the program’s return to official TSSAA play, in which every home game was played on someone else’s field – one of their JMCSS neighbors in town.

And now, they’ve played two games at JCM’s old home, Lane Field – or the place formerly known as Rothrock Stadium.

“That energy was different,” Young said about playing on Lane’s field. “It felt like home because I guess it is home to a lot of the older people who played here before us.”

But the Cougars have to leave home to start Region 6-2A play this week with a trip to Camden. The Lions are also 2-0, averaging about 50 points per game. So it appears to be another increase in the level of competition for the Cougars.

“We’ve got the same mindset this week as we do every week,” said lineman Daveon Johnson. “It’s to keep our head down, work hard in practice, listen to our coaches, remember the game plan, focus on us and not worry too much about whoever we line up against from the other team.”

That has worked for preparation for Liberty and South Side. And running back Jonas Patterson said there’s no reason to think that mode of preparation won’t work for Camden too.

“Camden is a good team, no doubt about that,” Patterson said. “But you can’t go into a game thinking too much about what the other team might do.

“We’re focused on us, what we do and what we can do better.”

Young said the team experiencing everything that is has during their time playing high school football has brought everyone together, especially in the past year.

“We’ve come together more as a team than we were last year,” Young said. “There’s a lot more talking going on between all of us and not just different groups.

“I think that’s made us all better because we’re one team.”

Johnson has been a part of that because he didn’t get to be a part of the on-field product at JCM last year due to a shoulder injury and recovery from surgery right before the season started. He was cleared to take part in offseason work in November of 2023, so he’s been back with the team for the entire offseason.

“I didn’t get to play last year, so I just did what I could in helping my teammates play better,” Johnson said. “But I think that time helped me get better too. But I’m glad to be back out there.”

Patterson said he hopes to see a similar group of JCM fans in Camden on Friday similar to what they’ve seen in Jackson the last two weeks.

“Come on out because we want to see that energy on the road that we’ve seen the last two weeks,” Patterson said.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news