HSFT Stop No. 15: Bruce

BRUCE, Miss. (WCBI) — The Bruce football team entered last season looking for its first winning record in more than a decade. Head coach Chuck Darbonne joined the program and immediately brought a different mentality to the Trojans, leading to a 6-5 season.

“When he came in, he told us we were going to win,” senior Ashton Pierce said. “There was no reason to believe we were going to win. It was more like we were going to win.”

One thing stood out more than anything else in Darbonne’s coaching style.

“It was that energy, he came on the field, I remember meeting him myself and it was something different that we had never worked with before and it was just something that he had that we liked,” senior receiver Jarrett Bowling said.

From the outside, it looked like Bruce had come out of nowhere, but Darbonne knew this group had what it took to succeed.

“It was just about building confidence,” Darbonne said. “I knew what these guys had in them and they just had to see it on a Friday night in front of everybody for them to really believe it.”

Bruce has won just four games in total over the last three seasons combined, with the Trojans starting the 2023 season with a 5-1 record. All that hard work has finally paid off.

“Everyone was so happy and we couldn’t contain our excitement,” junior right tackle Kahdamien Jones said. “After we won our first game, we came back here and started screaming.”

The Trojans have to replace a ton of players from last year’s team, but the team is confident some of the younger players will step up to the plate.

“We lost a lot of seniors last year, but we have new players here ready to take over.”

Now that this team knows what it’s like to win, they want to build on that success. The key to doing that is to keep the same mindset they had last season.

“They hadn’t had a lot of success in high school, so I think they were determined to succeed, so you had to keep that hungry mentality, telling us that we were going to get better every day.”

Bruce begins the season on the road against South Pontotoc.