Pisgah JV football wins fifth straight conference championship
Nov. 5—It's been quite the football season for the Canton community as Bears fans have enjoyed dominant success at all levels. Between Canton Middle and Pisgah High's varsity and JV squads, the Bears have three conference titles and just one combined loss.
CMS finished the year as undefeated conference champs and Pisgah varsity's only loss came on the road at Davy Crockett in Tennessee. They headed into the 3A state playoffs as the No. 1 seed out of the western region. The JV Bears completed a 9-0 conference champion season of their own with a big win over North Henderson Oct. 28.
"Those are kind of expectations. We talk to them about it every year. We have goal sheets that we fill out and that's always the number one goal, to go undefeated," JV Head Coach Jacob Hannah said.
Over the last nine seasons, Pisgah JV has lost more than two games just once and has never finished worse than second in conference. Since 2013, the JV Bears are a combined 75-10. This season's conference championship is the fifth straight.
"If I'm a kid and I know that the year before, the team did this and I'm coming up, then I don't want to be the one that drops that or lets that go," Hannah said. "So they know the work they've gotta put into it and how we roll and how we operate."
Hannah credits the hard-working culture of the community for a large part of how the teams are able to sustain success season after season at each level.
"Going back from five or six to 18, this community, you have that mill down there and you have all these blue-collar men and women working in it. I was a product of it and all you know is work," Hannah said.
He explained that the hard-working mindset of the community as a whole is typically passed down from family members to children at home at a young age and is reinforced as they grow up around folks that have been raised with similar values for generations. Hannah said the coaching staff works to carry that mindset over from life overall to the football field.
"We want to bring that out even more. You gotta find something that you know is going to stick with these kids and you know that they're used to," Hannah said. "By gosh if you're a hard worker and you're tough, then that's what we're going to go with. We're going to try to be even tougher and we're going to try to outwork you in anything. That's just kind of the mindset I feel like this whole community has and has had for decades. It's kind of like it's all we've ever really known."
One example of how the mindset seeps into kids in the community at a young age is with Hannah's six-year-old son, Duke. Hannah said they didn't make it out to the varsity's regular season finale against North Henderson and that when he told Duke they won the next morning, he responded with "we better."
From losing their home field due to flood damage to the sudden tragic passing of longtime middle school athletic director Steve Ledford and the numerous injuries they've overcome, Hannah said he feels proud of how his team has handled the obstacles.
"We don't like to get too coddly and jacked up and all that kind of stuff until it's time," Hannah said. "It's kind of time when you win the big one, the conference championship, then we can start praising them a little bit. We like to stay focused on one game at a time and now we can sit back and reflect and be excited about it and realize everything we did that was great, with a lot of adversity."
The continued success at the JV level is a big key to having that continue on when the players reach the varsity ranks.
"Success breeds confidence, so anytime you're successful in anything, I think it's just going to continue, at least the mindset side of it," Hannah said. "The work side of it still has to come, but if you've done something and you feel confident in it, you've been successful in it, then you're going to just keep wanting those same results."
