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Magnolia Wildcats football players come together for a cheer at the start of a practice in July. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Dylan Britt hollers encouragement to his Magnolia Wildcats teammates while they stretched before a practice in July. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats offensive lineman Thomas Patterson holds up a football during a practice in July. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Roman Tuminello, left, tries to break a tackle against Sam Nichols during a drill at practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats assistant coach Blake Stanley, right, helps adjust the helmet of Jayvion Caples during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Byron Jones prepares to run a sprint during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Byron Jones warms up before practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats head coach James Honeycutt, right, fixes the pads of player Roman Tuminello during a practice in July. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players take a water break during a practice in July. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats head coach James Honeycutt watches practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players James Howell and Thomas Patterson work against each other during a drill in practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Ethan Parker runs a sprint during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players listen to a coach give them instructions during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players James Howell and Thomas Patterson work against each other during a drill in practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Trey Stewart runs a sprint during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players Byron Jones, left, and Dylan Britt work against each other during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Dylan Britt runs a sprint during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football player Jayvion Caples, left, tackles Trey Stewart during a practice drill. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players Braeden Donaldson, left, and Isaiah Brown prepare to go against each other during a practice drill. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats head coach James Honeycutt, left, talks to Braeden Donaldson during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players Braeden Donaldson, left, and Isaiah Brown work against each other during a practice drill. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats assistant coach Blake Stanley, right, congratulates Colt Stewart following a successful practice drill. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats head coach James Honeycutt and player Braeden Donaldson are seen during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats head coach James Honeycutt, left, talks to Byron Jones during practice. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Magnolia Wildcats football players Colt Stewart, left, and Dylan Britt work against each other during a practice drill. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

A Magnolia Wildcats football helmet. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

Editor’s Note: This story appears in “Playmakers,” The Vicksburg Post’s annual football preview magazine. The 48-page special edition is included with the Aug. 24-25 weekend print and E-editions of The Post and includes previews, features and more for all of Warren County’s high school teams.

On a brutally hot summer afternoon, the Magnolia Wildcats arrived for practice at Freedom Ridge Park in Ridgeland.

They warmed up, ran through agility drills and sprints just like every other high school football team in Mississippi — even though they are not your typical high school football team.

The Wildcats are a home school football team, one of the first in Mississippi. They formed earlier this year and began their inaugural season in early August.

James Honeycutt, the Wildcats’ head coach and athletics director, said the team offers home school students an opportunity to play a sport that has previously been closed off to them. Most home school associations do not offer sports at all, and few in Mississippi play football.

“We saw an opportunity because we realized there were really no home school football programs of any kind in the state of Mississippi, while Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee have it,” Honeycutt said. “Most of these kids will play up to rec league and that’s it. But they’ll play baseball, basketball, those other sports, so we saw an opportunity to not only expand the idea of home school football to these kids but kickstart the idea to other people around here that we can do this too.”

Junior lineman Dylan Britt, from Vicksburg, said he was appreciative of the chance to be part of a team.

“Since I’m home schooled I don’t have many opportunities to meet new people, so when I met all these people it was awesome,” Britt said.

SETTING THE FORMATION
Honeycutt said the idea to start the Wildcats began late last year with informal discussions among parents. It picked up steam, and an interest meeting drew about a dozen players.

More meetings got more people on board and the idea soon became a reality. The Wildcats had enough players to do spring practice and a spring game, and have continued to work throughout the summer.

There are currently 31 players on the roster in grades 7-12. Only two are seniors. They’ll have a junior varsity and varsity roster, with many playing on both teams.

“We were limited at first to hearsay and Facebook. Once we got about 10 to 12 people interested, we held an interest meeting in January and then another one. By that time we had about 20 kids total in seventh- through 12th grade,” Honeycutt said. “As spring and summer went on we gained as much as 40 but finally ended up with 31. We’re happy with the number that we have now because we can manage that a lot better than we thought.”

The Wildcats pull their players from a slew of home school associations and church-based schools in Central Mississippi. About a third of the roster is from Vicksburg, while others live in Brookhaven and the Jackson Metro area.

The team practices at Freedom Ridge Park in Ridgeland but does not have a true home field. All of its games — 10 varsity and six junior varsity — will be on the road. They’ll play a JV game at Porter’s Chapel Academy in Vicksburg on Sept. 12.

“All of our games are away. It’s more cost-effective, and just due to the lack of football fields that are available in the Metro area,” Honeycutt said. “We would like to (play at home) next year. It just depends on what’s available and what financially we can settle for.”

With players coming from all points of the compass, Honeycutt said there are logistical challenges. A group that rides together, like the one from Vicksburg, might be absent if someone has car trouble or scheduling issues. Thankfully, he said, those days have been rare.

“We obviously get really handicapped when, say, people are carpooling and someone gets sick and can’t take the rest of the group. That really hinders us,” he said. “But we hope to have about 80 percent of the kids here every practice. That’s the goal we set. The other part is convincing people that this is a legit team.”

The Wildcats are part of the five-member Mid-South Christian Football League, which is comprised of similar teams in Mississippi and Louisiana. The Pine Belt Spartans formed in Hattiesburg this year, and Honeycutt is hopeful they will become a natural rival for his squad.

The rest of the schedule is vs. MAIS and independent teams. The first conference game against the Faith Explorers is Aug. 30 in Jackson.

The Wildcats play eight-man football, which Honeycutt said better suits the team’s size and skill level.

“Right now we figured (eight-man) was the best course of action, because a lot of these 11-man teams around here are just way too big and more developed than we are,” he said.

MEN IN MOTION
Honeycutt is encouraged by what he’s seen from the team so far. They beat MAIS member Heritage Christian Academy 30-6 in their spring game, and the roster is big enough to run scrimmages in practice.

He is quick to point out, however, that many of the players are new to organized football. Some played in recreational youth leagues like the Vicksburg YMCA, but many have not.

“My uncles kept telling me I need to keep playing football because of my size and stuff like that,” said junior wide receiver Trey Stewart, a Vicksburg resident. “I said I’m going to give it a shot. This is my first time playing. I used to play basketball. I’m going to try football.”

Jayvion Caples, a sophomore running back and defensive back from Vicksburg, joined the team in the spring after Honeycutt made a pitch to his home school association.

“I always wanted to play football,” Caples said. “He came to the school and started talking about us playing football and stuff. I was really excited to come join the football team. All I had to do was ask my mama and she said yes.”

Sophomore defensive lineman Byron Jones also jumped at the chance to play his favorite sport. Jones played in the Vicksburg YMCA league but not since.

“Football is my favorite sport so that’s why I really wanted to play football, to get to bond with new people and have fun,” Jones said.

The initial success of the football program, Honeycutt said, has created more opportunities for Magnolia Wildcats Athletics. Softball and cheerleading teams were also formed this summer and have a dozen members each. The softball team holds practices in Vicksburg.

Honeycutt said it’s all an effort to expand extracurricular offerings for the students under the Magnolia umbrella. Students interested in joining can email magnoliawildcats@gmail.com for information.

“The program is growing and we’d like to see it grow more as the years go on,” Honeycutt said. “We just want to give these kids an opportunity they never had before.”

THE GOAL LINE
With a roster of mostly-new players going against established opponents, Honeycutt has modest goals for the Wildcats’ inaugural season.

He hopes they can contend for the Mid-South Christian Football League championship and win a few of the non-conference games while building a solid foundation for the future.

“Set the tone. Build the program to be stable. We would like to go .500, get a pretty even season, go strong into the playoffs. Hopefully we can win all of our conference games,” Honeycutt said. “That’s our main goal. The other teams in our conference are new just like us. So playing these seasoned programs helps make us better.”

Part of getting established, he added, is getting a positive reputation in the football world. Being competitive — something their spring game victory showed they can do — and not a fly-by-night outfit are big parts of that.

Honeycutt said he’s had a number of MAIS teams, as well as home school teams from other states, reach out about scheduling games. He took that as a sign things are going in the right direction.

“It definitely helps spread the word that we’re here and we want to play,” he said. “Even after we finished our schedule we had teams that wanted to play scrimmages and play us early in the season and we just couldn’t do it because we already had our schedule full. That’s definitely a positive thing to look forward to as we build this program.”

2024 Magnolia Wildcats schedule
All games at 7 p.m. unless noted
Aug. 9 — at Wilkinson Christian
Aug. 16 — at Humphreys Academy
Aug. 23 — at River Oaks
Aug. 30 — at Faith Explorers
Sept. 7 — at Mississippi School for the Deaf, 6 p.m.
Sept. 13 — Open date
Sept. 20 — *at Faith Christian
Sept. 27 — *at Pine Belt Spartans
Oct. 4 — *at Slidell Homeschool
Oct. 11 — at Christ Covenant
Oct. 18 — at Northeast Baptist
*Mid-South Christian League games

Wildcats roster
No….Name……………….Pos…………..Gr.
2…..Jayvion Caples……RB/CB………10
4…..Corey Magee……….WR/CB……..12
6…..Trey Stewart……….WR/CB………11
7…..Braeden Donaldson…..RB/CB….12
10….Connor Bradley…..OL/LB……….9
12…..Grayson Bradley…RB/CB……….7
13…..Dawson Cuevas…..OL/DL……….9
14…..Ezekiel Brown…….OL/DL……….7
15…..Ethan Parker………QB/CB……….9
17…..Mason Short………QB/CB/K…….9
18…..Charlie Clark……..OL/DL………..8
21…..Jaden Mondy……..RB/OL……….11
25…..Byron Jones Jr. .. OL/DL……….10
27…..Amos Blair…………OL/DL……….8
28…..John Jamison III…..FB/DL…..10
41…..Roman Tuminello…..OL/LB…..12
55…..Isiah Brown……….OL/LB………..9
57…..Taylor McCool…..WR/CB……….8
64…..Dylan Britt……….. OL/DL……….11
67…..Avery Sullivan…….OL/DL………10
73…..Thomas Patterson…..OL/DL…..10
79…..James Howell……..OL/DL……….9
82…..Brody Webb……….WR/CB………8
85…..Josh Deckard………OL/DL………10
92…..Sam Nichols………..OL/DL………11

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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