OPINION: JCM restoring its roar is a beautiful site in football

American football has a synchronous combination of beauty and brutality. The brutality is as evident as a teeth-chattering hit from a linebacker; the beauty, however, is a bit more subtle—as unexpected as a sleight-of-hand screen pass on third and long. 

My love for football doesn’t have its roots in the violence displayed on the field. My obsession with the game is grounded in the cyclical poetic stories told from the beginning of each season to the end.

Regardless of the level—high school, NCAA, or NFL—each football season starts with training camp in the sweltering heat of late July or early August and ends when the trees are bare and the air is cold. Fans wear shorts and T-shirts to the first few games of the season while lugging around a sense of fantastical hope for their favorite team. By the time the final game concludes, the summer clothes have been packed away, along with whatever pipe dreams were dashed within the season’s first month or two. At the end of each season, there can only be one winner - one state champion, one national champion, and one Super Bowl champion. For everyone else, there’s always next year. 

If we only viewed football through the black-and-white prism of wins and losses, we would fail to see the artistic value woven into the fabric of the most popular sport in America today. We would also fail to see the beauty of one of the most important stories being told this year in our city and school system. 

Three years ago, Jackson Central-Merry High School was in the process of reopening. After spending the first quarter of the 2021-2022 school year shuffling between the Oman Arena, Early College High, and Madison Academic, JCMHS students were finally getting settled in the refurbished Merry High School in early November of 2021. The challenges of opening a new school were enough on their own. Trying to field a varsity football team while also trying to move into a new building was a lot to ask, so the Cougars played a modified Junior Varsity schedule their first season and an Independent, non-district schedule that season and the following year. 

While students and faculty adjusted to their new building, the school's culture was also taking shape. Because high school sports significantly impact a building's climate and culture, JCM’s brand and identity wouldn’t be wholly fleshed out until the Cougars took the field for their first full varsity season in August 2023.

For the two years leading to the Cougars’ inaugural varsity season, Coach Erit Turner laid the foundation for what would come to be known as the “Rebirth” of a legendary football program in a historic high school. He ordered uniforms, weights, and equipment. He cleaned out old rooms filled with cobwebs and dust. He scheduled games and traveled to whoever would play this new brand of young Cougars. He built his players through experience and adversity—a traveling band of brothers building a team from the ground up. If you wrote a list of what was required to start a football team from scratch one hundred times, you’d leave something off that list every time. The minutia and detail can be crippling, yet Turner was determinedly stoic. He just kept moving the chains. 

A year ago, as the Cougars were in the midst of an eight-game losing streak during their much-anticipated opening season, ground was broken on the new Hub City Central complex, which was planned to be home to the Cougar football team for most of the 2024 season. The news was a much-needed shot in the arm during a time when there wasn’t much to celebrate on the football front. 

The 2023 season for the Cougars was bookended by wins against Liberty and Gibson County but filled with losses in between. Like the beauty of the sport itself, the small successes could be seen in the threads of most of the Cougars' losses - a competitive three quarters, some flashy plays on offense and defense, and usually a couple of series loaded with mistakes. Anyone watching from a distance could see the potential on the field and the needed growth to fulfill it.

As the 2024 season opened, the Cougar football team faced a new set of challenges, this time off the field. Hub City Central had been delayed, and construction on the new stadium hadn’t even started by the time the season began. The Cougars also had to travel to practice at Muse Park because no practice field on campus was suitable for game simulation. Not having a home stadium or a practice field would be debilitating for most programs. For Coach Turner and his players, however, it was just another way to build character.

In true poetic fashion, Lane College allowed JCM to once again call Rothrock Stadium home on Friday nights.  On the opening night of the 2024 season, JCM defeated Liberty 54-0, setting the stage for an unforgettable season.

In Weeks 2 and 3, JCM trounced South Side and Camden Central. In Week 4, the Cougars traveled to Milan, emerging victorious in a high-scoring affair. After a dominant win against Adamsville, JCM defeated North Side on a last-second touchdown to win the Commissioner’s Cup and seal a 6-0 start to the season. 

The Cougars stumbled a bit down the stretch, losing consecutive games to Huntingdon and Trenton-Peabody, but finished the year with an 8-2 record—a mirrored reflection of last year’s 2-8 season. 

On Friday, November 8th - only three years after reopening - the Cougars will play in the TSSAA playoffs for the first time since 2013. Depending on when you read this piece, JCM’s season could be over, or they could be moving on to Round 2 of the playoffs. For the sake of the story, though, neither one matters.

What matters is the hope personified through this program’s players and coaches. What matters is that Friday nights at Rothrock are relevant again. What matters is seeing the East Side come out to support a team and school ripped away from it in 2016. That is the beauty of football - the hope, the fight, and the resilience that culminate to make this a story worth telling. 

JCM’s season will end at some point - whether in Summertown this weekend, the state championship in Chattanooga, or somewhere in between - because that’s what seasons do; they end. What will remain, however, is the story of the Rebirth of JCM Football, the roar restored to Cougar Nation, and all of the adversity that was overcome to make it happen. 

Gabe Hart is an educator in Madison County who’s written columns that have been published in multiple outlets locally and statewide.