Titans ‘blessed’ with season

Published 8:17 pm Saturday, September 16, 2017

When Keitha Jones was stuck in a Beaumont shelter for four days after Tropical Storm Harvey, the Port Arthur Memorial quarterback could only pray that his senior season hadn’t gone awash.

“You just pray about it and hope you can still have a season,” Jones said. “God blessed us with a season, and we just take that blessing and run with it.”

The prayers have been answered. Memorial’s 16th season will kick off Wednesday at the Thomas Center against Beaumont Central.

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Jones isn’t complaining about a mid-week game earlier.

“As a team, we’re ready for it,” he said. “It means shorter practices and more games. We’re ready for it and we embrace the opportunity to still be playing.”

Unlike Nederland and Port Neches-Groves, the Titans have not yet played a game. Harvey washed out a home game against Dallas Bishop Dunne and forced cancelation of a Week 2 game at Houston Westside.

So, Titans coach Kenny Harrison picked up a scrimmage at former District 21-6A rival Channelview last Saturday.

“It helped out a lot,” Harrison said. “It gave us a chance to eliminate some of the mental mistakes we were making versus another opponent. It’s always good to see your kids go up against another opponent, just to see how they’re going to react in the fire.”

More than a week earlier, Jones and his teammates were just trying to beat the flood, hoping they’d soon get to beat defenses.

His family made it through Harvey just fine.

“We were actually blessed,” he said. “It didn’t flood over on my side [of town], but in the situation I was in, I got water on my side. I wasn’t home.”

Jones was at a friend’s house when they discovered the water was chest-high. They evacuated to the shelter and stayed for four days.

The Titans finally commenced for practice Sept. 6, nine days after their last workout before Harvey. Harrison said two of his players are still displaced from the tropical storm.

“I think a lot of them were just ready to get back out here,” Harrison said. “A lot of them thought the football season was going to be over. The fact that they get a chance to finish the season off was very motivating to them. They came out with a good attitude.”

The District 22-5A executive committee compressed the first four weeks of the season, meaning eight of the nine teams will begin play Wednesday, with games also scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 26, Wednesday, Sept. 27, Monday, Oct. 2 and Saturday, Oct. 7. Memorial was originally going to be off this weekend, anyway, but Harrison agreed to trade an off-date with Vidor, which was still missing a number of players, to give the Pirates more time to prepare for the season. Vidor, which was originally off Week 10, will begin the season Sept. 27 at home against Central, while Memorial takes off the weekend of Nov. 3.

Harrison said he agreed to the reschedule because it wasn’t fair to Vidor and other teams missing athletes if the district were to resume the original slate. Memorial’s “game week” schedule began Friday, with Saturday treated as a Tuesday before the game, Sunday as an off-date, Monday as a Wednesday and Tuesday as a Thursday.

“Conditioning was a challenge because they hadn’t been out here,” Harrison said. “For the most part, they had a positive attitude, and they’ve been ready to go.”

In three days, the season Jones so prayed for will begin under Wednesday night lights, a different experience for him and the Titans.

So is coming back from an historic hurricane-turned-tropical storm.

“It’s tough, but we came together as a family, and it’s been great,” Jones said. “We stick together and work hard. We know the season is all we have. We’re just going to work hard to get better and stay together and we’re going to overcome this.”

I.C. Murrell: 549-8541. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews

About I.C. Murrell

I.C. Murrell was promoted to editor of The News, effective Oct. 14, 2019. He previously served as sports editor since August 2015 and has won or shared eight first-place awards from state newspaper associations and corporations. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, grew up mostly in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and graduated from the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

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