Gridiron champions
Harding Academy wins Class 3A state football title
The 2015 football season was all about family at Harding Academy in Searcy.
Roddy Mote’s Wildcats won the school’s sixth state championship, knocking off Rivercrest at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock Dec. 12 in the Class 3A title game, 33-18, to finish the season 14-1.
“There’s a lot of uniqueness about this group,” Mote said. “I could not have written a better script.”
Senior quarterback Alex Francis (5-11, 155) was named MVP of the championship game after completing 22 of 33 passes for 308 yards and two touchdowns with one interception. He added 28 yards and one rushing touchdown on four carries. That’s the first family connection. In 2012, Francis’ older brother, Will, led the Wildcats to their fifth state title, 49-45 over Glen Rose. Alex Francis, as a freshman, moved up to the varsity for the postseason that year. In his senior season in 2015, he completed 300 of 448 passes
for 3,955 yards and 49 touchdowns with seven interceptions. For his career, he threw for 9,278 yards.
Will Francis was also MVP of his state championship game.
The second connection is the Mote family.
Mote’s father, Gail Mote (coincidentally, his own high school coach in West Virginia) has served him as an assistant coach for several years and will retire following this championship season. Mote’s son Ty was a senior center/ linebacker for the Wildcats and led the team in tackles. Family connection No. 3? Assistant coach Jerry Laird’s son Easton was a senior offensive tackle for the Wildcats. No. 4? The 2015 squad included a pair of brothers: junior Ryan Turley and sophomore Travis Turley. No. 5? Four players on the 2015 squad have brothers who were on the 2012 championship team: the Francises; senior Carson Gentry and his older brother Hunter; senior Weston Burks and his brother Carter; and sophomore Ty Carger and his brother Lane.
The sixth family connection?
Three Wildcats have fathers who also played on Harding Academy state championship teams: Weston Burks’ father, Bryan, was on the 1983 title team; Derek Yingling’s father, J.D., was on the team that won the school’s first state championship in 1976; and Kennedy Barden’s father, Greg, was on the 1983 championship squad coached by his father, Bill Barden.
“Coach B is considered the grandfather of Wildcat football,” Mote said.
Of the 42 Wildcats on the roster, 30 percent of their fathers played football for Harding Academy, and 40 percent of the parents are employed by Harding Academy or Harding University. More than 50 percent of the players have been together since kindergarten and about 80 percent since elementary school, Mote said.
Harding Academy’s state titles came in 1976, ’77, ’83, 2002, ’12 and ’15.
“We never talk about state championships,” Mote said. “We don’t even talk about conference championships. We just talk week to week. We talk more about the process as opposed to the outcome.”
Obviously, the process is working. The Wildcats have won 52 consecutive conference games and seven straight conference titles.
“Our last conference loss was my first year in 2008,” Mote said.
Mote was an assistant under former Wildcat coach Tommy Shoemaker and succeeded him in 2008 when Shoemaker went to Central Arkansas Christian.
This season, the Wildcats’ only loss came in Week 2 against Class 5A Vilonia, 4720.
Fourteen seniors will graduate.
“Obviously, our accomplishments this year are a great tribute to their leadership,” Mote said. “Every year, our seniors come up with a theme for the year, and the theme this year was, ‘Finish Empty,’ based on 2 Timothy 4:6-8. That has really permeated our school.”
He said another key was the community- and family-orientation of the school.
“We have a pep rally every single week during football season, K-12,” he said. “Everybody’s there. The elementary [students] bring so much life to this school. They are so excited, and they just love the older kids. They look up to them. It’s just a great experience for our whole school.”
He said he couldn’t really distinguish any difference between this championship season and the one in 2012.
“They’re all satisfying,” he said. “It’s a great experience, obviously. None of these seniors will play college football. They’re just a bunch of good high school football players.”
Alex Francis, who will walk on the Harding University basketball team to join his older brother next year, said he was sad to walk off the football field for the final time.
“But being able to finish off with a win with some of my best friends — I’ll remember that for a long, long time,” he said. “Even though football has ended, the friendships and relationships I’ve made will go on for as long as I live. No matter what, my friends and teammates will be there, and I’ll be able to depend on them whenever life hits me hard.”
Mote said he wasn’t surprised by Francis’ success.
“He comes through and makes plays,” Mote said. “He’s seasoned; he comes through in the clutch and has great poise. The things you see during the games on Fridays are special, but he’s even much more special a person than he is a player.
“If we have a star, it’s Alex Francis, but we really don’t have one. That’s a characteristic of this football team. We had no superstars, but they played pretty well defensively, and they got better as the year went on, and we didn’t have any injuries. That was huge for us.”
Mote said he tried every year to make the season a special one for his seniors.
“I pray about it, and it just seems like opportunities arise out of those prayers,” he said, mentioning a summer trip to Dalton, Georgia, in 2012 when the Wildcats did community service, went whitewater rafting and played a 7-on-7 tournament.
Coincidentally or not, the only other time the Wildcats returned to Dalton was 2015.
Maybe they should repeat that trip in 2016.