Futral decides to use skills to help Begley’s program
Codie Futral has been the epitome of multi-sport student athlete over the course of his career at Starkville Academy.
Over the years, Futral has been on the Starkville Daily News All-Area team in basketball, baseball and football and the transitions from sport to sport never stop. He didn’t play football his entire high school career at SA, but gave it a shot last season and became one of the Volunteers biggest threats on both offense and defense.
On the hardwood this past year, Futral helped lead the Vols to the MAIS 2-AAA championship for the second-straight year and a runner-up finish in the North State Championship game as well as a berth at the State tournament.
While he’s also tearing it up on the baseball diamond and prepping his team for the state playoffs, Futral had to make a decision on where he goes from here. Round ball was an easy choice for him and an opportunity from East Mississippi Community College
and coach Billy Begley was too tough to turn down.
“Getting to play on the next level means everything to me,” Futral said. “Basketball is what I love to do. I can do it every day of my life so it was a great opportunity to continue to do it. I could have played baseball or do both at other places, but I wanted to go to EMCC and play for coach Begley.”
Starkville Academy head basketball coach Bruce Allsup has relied heavily on Futral the last two seasons to help lead the way to the consecutive district championships. It
was no coincidence that with those championships came accolades for the shooting guard as he racked up backto-back Player of the Year honors in conference play.
“He’s very well thought of throughout our conference and our state from other coaches,” Allsup said. “When you’ve got that type of player, you’re going to rely on him a lot and we did.”
Begley and the Lions won’t have to rely on him as heavily as the Vols did, but Futral believes he will have a place in that offense. Begley has already seen enough out of Futral to know that he can help the team score some points.
“He likes how I don’t like to do too much just play the game,” Futral said of Begley. “I see his program growing up well and it’s going to get better and better. Coach Begley is a great coach and I feel like he’s going to make me better as a player.”
Allsup has no worries that things will work out for his former star player.
Futral was one of the toughest players in the MAIS to defend the last two years because of his ability to drive to the basket and finish. Now, his coach says he’ll have to develop his game more. As dedicated as he is to getting better, that won’t be an issue in the mind of Allsup.
“Codie is a very good athlete,” Allsup said. “He takes that athleticism and goes out there on the basketball court and uses it in the right way. I think his greatest attribute was being able to get to the rim. On the next level, he’s going to have to develop his shooting, but when he gets more consistent, there it’s only going to add to his game.”
EMCC now has three signees from the city of Starkville as SDN Player of the Year Darrious Agnew and Markedric Bell also signed with the Lions last week. Starkville guards Keith Harris and Darius Wilson are set to be sophomores for Begley’s squad next season.