Here’s a little bit of Jackson Christian football trivia over the last four years.
How many games have the Eagles won? 37.
How many playoff games have they won? Four.
How many Mr. Football finalists have they had? Two.
How many Mr. Football awards have their players won? One.
How many championships have they won? Zero.
Darby Palmer is the dean of high school football coaches in Madison County, leading the program since 2017. In fact, the other six schools have had a change at head coach in the last two years.
And the consistency in the program is showing as the Eagles are consistently in the conversation for the Division II-A state championship.
However, something has eluded their grasp despite all the wins, offensive achievements and defensive victories the program his piled up in four years.
The Eagles have yet to get to the state championship game. The closest they came to that was 2022 when they made it to the state semifinals.
But they also have failed to win a region championship.
“We’ve accomplished a good bit, but that’s one thing we haven’t done yet,” Palmer said. “So when you refer to ‘the next step’ for Jackson Christian football, in a way, the answer is winning a championship, but in another way, it’s hard to really answer that question.
“Because each team is different. We had 13 players off last year’s team graduate, and we’ve brought in a class of freshmen. In the meantime, the three years of athletes ahead of them have developed on and off the field in quality players.”
University School of Jackson was the main obstacle the first three years as the Bruins won the league then went on to compete for state championships. Then last year when USJ had moved up to Division II-AA, the Eagles entered the final week of the regular season undefeated, and so had their neighbors on Windy City Road, Trinity Christian. That made their game the region championship.
In that game, receive Jay’Len Mosley, a talented receiver who would go on to be Jackson Christian’s Mr. Football winner, would injure his knee late in the second quarter. Then the Eagles turned the ball over five times in the second half, giving TCA enough time to mount a big come back to win the game and the championship.
And while the loss was disappointing, Palmer used that during the offseason to motivate and teach the players.
“The best way to respond to a loss is to learn from it, and that’s what we try to do here,” Palmer said. “We made a lot of mistakes in the second half of that game, and they were made by a number of different guys.
“But fortunately in the moment, that loss didn’t end our season. In fact we played two more games in the playoffs before our season ended, so we got a chance learn from that loss and show that we had learned and improved from it.”
So while the focus in the offseason hasn’t necessarily been on winning a championship per se, it has been mentioned, particularly when a look at a list of the returning Eagles suggests they should be in contention for both Division II-A West region championship and the state title.
Mosley is back. So is quarterback Austin Kelly. On the defensive side, leaders like Kai Wyatt and Gavin Walker return.
“We’ve got five starters returning on both sides of the ball, so the experience is there,” Palmer said. “And the six open slots on each side that will be filled with guys who may not have started last year, but they did get a good amount of playing time.
“So we’re experienced going into the season.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news