Not surprisingly, the Wolves feel good about 2023.
Really good.
West Plains head coach Adam Cummings returns all but six players off the Wolves’ 7-5 bi-district winning season of 2022, the first in the history of the newly built Class 4A school located on the southwest outskirts of Amarillo.
Also returning for the Wolves from the impressive seven-win season is a hefty class of 31 seniors, nine starters on each side of the ball, including one of the top young gunslingers in all of Texas sophomore quarterback Reid Macon.
This means in a span of 12 months between opening-season games in late August vs. Bushland in 2022 and 2023 the Wolves have gone from a program loaded with question marks to seeing Dave Cambell’s Texas Football magazine pick West Plains as the favorite to win District 2-4A Division II.
Cummings said if he, his coaching staff and players get caught up in all the early hoopla over the Wolves, the 2023 season will be a tough one.
“That is something we have really stressed to our kids,” Cummings said. “Just because we have gone from being the underdogs to quote unquote front runner doesn’t change our mindset. Our approach is to our daily grind and our ability to get one percent better each day, our ability to take full benefit of the opportunities in front of us during the course of a day, during the course of a week, that doesn’t change.
It can’t change. You lose that fundamental then what are we doing? What’s the end goal? For us, it’s way less about a championship trophy, a playoff trophy. It’s more about what are we doing to get us one percent better than we were yesterday and put the best version of us moving forward.”
What the Wolves did well last year was shake off an 0-3 start to win seven of its last nine games, including a 56-7 bi-district win over Pecos.
Cummings credits the success of last year to the gift of trusting each other.
“It kind of goes back to the four-way test,” Cummings said. “Players believing in coaches. Coaches believing in players. Players believing in players. And coaches believing in coaches. I think we had that and never lost it. Even when we started 0-3 we had it and people stayed the course, stayed committed and never lost faith in one another. Because of that we had time to figure one another out and trim some fat on what we thought we could do and couldn’t do. And then we learned what some of the kids could do and to try and take advantage of their strengths. Because of all that we were able to grow and improve throughout the season.”
With confidence earned from last year’s success, things aren’t a little different from last year in August to today. Nope. The difference is like driving 333 miles from West Plains High School to Pecos. A long, long ways.
West Plains senior running back/linebacker Blaine Henry, praised by Cummings for his strong work ethic, said the past 12 months he and his teammates have gained so much more knowledge on what the coaches expect and the ins and outs of offensive and defensive schemes.
“Last year it was a lot of getting to know what we were going to do and learning,” Henry said. “This year we are prepared for it. We learned a lot and are ready to do it. What we have learned is trusting the coaches and we don’t have to get to know them. They know where to put us and what talents we have. Just our teamwork.
“This coaching staff is crazy good. They know a lot and they are experienced.”
“The change is so different from last year with everybody being so comfortable with each other,” Macon said. “It’s more like a brotherhood and family. Like, we have grown so much as a team. Everybody is super relaxed and we are not so tense as we were last year. Everybody is ready to play and happy to be out on the field again. Everybody has that joy and energy.”
Cummings said with everything new last year, with the team suiting up just more than 30 players for some games, and with as many as six starters missing a game due to injury keeping things simple was for the best.
Never last year was the entire offensive package in place simply because Cummings and his staff and players had other priorities.
“Part of the thing last year was figuring our kids out, what they are good at and what best suited them,” Cummings said. “So that was part of the growing process as a staff was figuring out their strengths. This year we kinda knew all of that because we didn’t lose but six seniors. With 31 seniors back we have a lot of returning experience.”
Macon said the West Plains playbook has expanded.
“We have a ton more in on the offense,” Macon said, then breaking into a smile. “We have new plays and have put on so much more compared to last year. It’s great.”
Cummings said Macon isn’t about to rest on his freshman success and one of those reasons is because he has a tough, tough critic.
“The thing with Reid is he’s going to be his biggest critic and he is going to be his biggest motivator,” Cummings said. “He’s very self-driven. I think because of that you don’t have to push him. He is going to push himself. And he’s a good leader on top of that.”
Along with a more diverse playbook to keep defenses off balance, Cummings said the potential depth West Plains has of suiting up 50 players for a game will be a major help. Along with that depth means competition at each position to earn a starting role.
“Competition is good all the way around,” Cummings said.
And, West Plains makes the leap from six seniors a year ago to suiting up 31 seniors this year. Cummings said this senior class is close, willing to accept responsibility and filled with leaders.
“We are obviously a senior-heavy class on this team,” Cummings said. “To their credit it’s a very mature class, a very hard working class. They are bought in. They love each others company and you can just tell they are a tight-knit group. When you watch them interact with underclassmen they are truly leading our program. We stress that all the time. We have to be a player-led team. If we are a coach-led team we only go so far. If we are player led the sky is the limit.”
Macon said the senior class is simply the best. Whether it’s golf or bowling outings together, Macon said the seniors are bonded and wants what’s best for everybody.
“All of them really step up and know their role and every one of those seniors appreciate each other and appreciate everybody on the team,” Macon said. “They are happy to be there.”
No doubt, West Plains coaches and players are proud and pleased with what happened last football season as few believed a winning record would happen let alone seven wins and a playoff victory.
But when talk of the 2023 West Plains football team is brought up the Wolves coaches and players get a look in their eyes. They know things are different from 2022.
“It’s been completely different as far as what our focus is on,” Cummings said. “Foundationally, it’s the same. It’s the basic principle of what we are trying to accomplish whether it be off-season this past spring, whether it be the summer workouts we are trying to get bigger, stronger and faster and develop team chemistry. Those things don’t change year-in and year-out. But we are so much farther along now than even we were last November when we finished the season. … I think our kids demonstrated through last year, through our off-season, through our summer workouts that they understand what we are doing and demonstrated they can execute our offense and defense. And they are bigger. They are stronger. They are faster. Some of that is due to maturing and some is they have bought in.”