HURLEY, Mississippi (WLOX) – The East Central Hornets are 3-7 and have missed the playoffs for the first time in years.

Head coach Sam Huff enters his third year with the program and says they are putting this behind them and are ready to show that last year is not how the Hornets normally operate.

“As soon as the season was over, these guys started working hard,” Huff said. “We addressed the things we fell short on last year. One of them was turnovers, for example. We lost the ball way too often and that was something we focused on especially early in training camp. I’m excited about it and hope we can carry over what we’ve been working on to Fridays.”

The Hornets bring 19 seniors and return five starters on offense and six on defense.

Coach Huff says experience is one of the most important things when they step out on the field.

“It makes a huge difference,” he said. “In this group we had a good mix of young guys who played last year and are experienced. We need them to lead on Fridays.”

Senior Safety Matthew Combs is one of those taking on this leadership role as a senior.

“We’re really pushing ourselves to the limit,” Combs said. “New guys are becoming new leaders and stepping up to grow as a team. All of us, the older guys, are stepping up. We want to put what happened last year behind us, clear our heads and start a new year.”

As an offensive tackle, senior Camden McGallagher is full contact every game and as he enters his senior year, he is looking forward to one thing in particular.

“Beating somebody,” he said. “I love coaching. I love hitting people in the face. There’s no better feeling. We just want to play as well as we can in our senior year. Play as well as we can for Coach Huff. Show him that all the hard work we’re doing here isn’t for nothing.”

As they prepare to put on their gear for one final ride, both seniors say they are proud of how much the team has progressed on and off the field.

“They mean a lot to me. We’ve been through a lot,” Combs said. “We’ve worked really hard together. We’ve come a long way. Our freshman year, we were very immature and didn’t look like we had a good future, but we’ve come a long way.”

“We’ve all been playing Pee-Wee ball together since we were six or seven years old and we all grew up playing football together,” McGallagher said. “We bonded because we realized these could be some of our last years as football players and it brought us all together because we want to be the best we can be.”

The Hornets begin the year with a home game against George County.

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