When Cross Creek head football coach Ezzard Horn was asked to name a couple of players on his team he thought were potential difference makers, it sounded as if he was trying to test his memory of his entire roster.
“Nasan Houston, Korean Banfield, Anthony Dyers, Keonta Hannah, Christian Robertson, Tyreek Talbert, Barry Story, Travis Brigham, Jonathon Underwood, Donald Jackson, Cam Nixon,” Horn said before pausing to name about a half dozen more.
“I mean, we returned the entire team from last year, minus three seniors,” he continued. “Everybody came back. Plus we added four more players from inside the building, and this isn’t counting a whole handful of freshmen who came out during the summer and a few more who are projected to show up once the school year hits.”
That, by the way, happens next Monday, August 7 in Richmond County for high school students. But even before those players come, Horn has enjoyed something he couldn’t have even dreamed of when he took over the reins of Razorback football last summer, just a few short weeks before the season kicked off.
Numbers.
During the spring football session in May, Horn said about 35 players were showing up every day for practice. That number inflated to close to 50 for summer workouts. Now, with Friday’s preseason scrimmage against Josey looming, and the season opener at Butler just two weeks away, the Cross Creek roster is almost 60 players strong.
“Cross Creek football hasn’t seen numbers like this in a while,” Horn said. “I don’t care what anyone says. These guys are here, and they’re excited to play.”
Aside from the numbers, it’s the players’ enthusiasm for year two of the Horn coaching era that gets Horn and his staff fired up. Cross Creek finished 1-9 last year with its lone win coming in a 32-8 victory over winless Savannah. It’s the same record the Razorbacks posted during Brian Lewis’ first and only year at the helm before leaving for an assistant job at Burke County.
But the progress Horn and company are seeing can’t just be measured in wins and losses — no matter what Cross Creek’s final 2023 record may end up to be.
“These guys are totally bought into the process,” Horn said. “We’ve got guys who, last year, we had to redirect them in practice five or six times. Now, not only are we not having to redirect them like that anymore, but we’ve got players holding players accountable. That’s something we didn’t have a lot of last year, and something Cross Creek hasn’t had in a while.”
Time brings a change
One thing Horn didn’t have in 2022 was a ton of time.
To put it in perspective, at this time last year, Horn was just being introduced as Cross Creek’s head football coach, a mere 18 days before the season kicked off. That means, he came in cold with no spring or summer football sessions. No camps or little else to gauge the talent of his roster or to begin instilling his brand of culture into the program.
“We had to teach them on the fly,” Horn said.
Even with that handicap, Horn said it was obvious that players were beginning to see and appreciate what their new coach was bringing to their football team.
“Coach Horn came in and brought everyone together and did what he could during that first year to make sure the program was right,” said senior defensive end Jonathan Underwood. “It was about work ethic. More work equals more progression, and that’s what we needed from the staff we have now. “He’s taught us some new things, brought in some new people and we see this turning into a good thing for the future.”
Junior wide receiver Cameron Nixon agrees.
“Our team adjusted very well to the changes,” Nixon said. “We got stronger and better even last year. No one’s BS-ing anymore. Everybody’s dedicated.”
Even despite posting the school’s sixth straight losing season, Nixon is optimistic even about what losing taught him and his teammates.
“We gained from the losses we took, and we became stronger,” Nixon said. “We had a team that suffered in the past, but Coach Horn has brought it back together again.”
Horn likes to use a military analogy to paint the picture of how his team has grown — particularly mentally — over the last 12 months.
“Our guys got beat up on last year, and now they know what to expect,” he said. “It’s like the first time you go out as a soldier and shoot an M16 (rifle), and that first, initial pop makes you jump. Well, they’ve been on the gun range too many times now to be scared, so that pop ain’t making them shake no more.”
You can hear it in the way his players talk about playing Josey in Friday’s home scrimmage. Both Underwood and Nixon said it’s going to be fun to hit someone else other than their own teammates for a change.
“I can’t say much about it, but, yeah, I’m going to enjoy it,” Underwood said. “It’s gonna feel really nice.”
Said Nixon: “We’ve got a big game coming up Friday, obviously, and we’re just ready to turn up.”
Building blocks in place
When Horn’s bunch takes the field against Josey Friday, and at Butler two weeks later, he’s going to be watching to see if a year’s worth of experience, complete with a host of 7-on-7 workouts, padded camps and organized team activities will pay dividends of greater attention to detail.
“I think all the work we’ve put in, and everyone we’ve got coming back, it all trickles over into discipline,” Horn said. “Last year, we averaged like eight false start penalties per game. Over the summer with our workouts, I think I saw maybe five false start penalties total. And from spring practice through the summer, I’ve seen maybe one or two.”
Much of that can be attributed to a team that was severely deficient on live, Friday night football experience. Cross Creek graduated just three seniors. And everybody else who had meaningful reps has returned. Horn estimates about “85 percent of my starters last year were sophomores” who were learning the fundamentals of football while competing against teams with players who had been there, done that.
“Most of those sophomores came in having played no middle school football and barely any snaps as freshmen,” Horn said. “We basically asked those sophomores to start without really having played any football, and even not knowing what to do and us having very little time to teach them, those guys still went out and competed for us.”
Now, those guys are less likely to freeze up under the Friday night lights, and players like Nixon seem poised to take the next step as a team leader.
“I think of a guy like Cam who, last year got off to a rocky start, but once he got his feet under him, in our eyes, he blossomed to be one of the best receivers in the area,” Horn said.
The 6-foot-2, 180-pound junior certainly did look the part at times last season. Nixon led his team in receiving with 19 carries and 244 receiving yards and a score. He provided a big target and decent deep threat for quarterback Ke’Shaun Posley.
Posley, himself, is another story of progress. The 5-foot-10, 175-pound senior quarterback threw for 495 yards and three scores while also rushing 172 yards on 24 carries. He’s back and one year older and mature, but Horn said he’s also being pushed by freshman Brandon Wallace who starred at Pine Hills Middle School which is one of Cross Creek’s feeders.
“Ke’Shaun is a senior and he’s come back, but those two guys are battling,” Horn said. “A senior and a freshman. It’s a competition. At Cross Creek football now, you’ve got to compete. Every day on this field, nothing is given.”
Wallace, considered by some area pundits, as a top-five CSRA freshman to watch, represents one of those building blocks Horn says he’s got with his younger players that he thinks can help this program turn a big corner this coming season.
“In addition to the other guys who learned, we’ve got senior leadership in Jonathan (Youngblood), we’ve got juniors like Cam who are ready to take over that leadership place, and we have freshmen like Wallace who are projected to get some decent minutes in their first year.”
Horn says a player like Wallace is huge for program momentum.
“It’s the first time Cross Creek has had a player with that much notoriety to start a season out of Middle School in a long, long time,” he said. “Just him coming into the program will make people want to watch because they know what he did in 7-on-7s, and they know what he did in middle school. Now they’ll se, ‘Ok, Cross Creek has a quarterback now. Let’s see what they can do with that.’”
Great expectations
Cross Creek’s last winning season came in 2016 when then-coach Robert McCarty guided the Razorbacks to a 6-5 mark and a Class AAAA playoff appearance. Aside from that, Cross Creek has posted only two other winning seasons (2005 and 2007) and one other non-winning season — a 5-5 mark in 2011.
Horn doesn’t use that history, though, to set his team goals.
“Our goal this year is winning a region championship,” he said. “Right now, this staff feels as that a record of anything less than 7-3 is a loss for us. We feel that confident in this team and coaching staff. 7-3 is definitely doable. My expectation for the team is region title.”
In a region with Richmond County, Harlem, Hephzibah, Morgan County and Salem — all teams that had to replace a lot of talent due to graduation, Horn sees the contrast with his experience laden squad as a plus.
“While some of those teams have to replace entire defensives, or receiving corps, or maybe half their offensive line, we’ve got everything and everyone coming back,” he said.
He’s looking to shore up the defense, particularly from a tackling standpoint, and he wants to see his offense sustain drives as a way of helping to keep the defense fresh.
Beyond the X’s and O’s, Horn says the greatest key to long term success at Cross Creek is continuity. And that starts with himself and his coaching staff. Cross Creek has had just three coaches stay for more than three seasons since the school began in 1999. And all of those coaches (McCarty, Scott Tate and Kevin Hunt) stayed four years.
McCarty, whose tenure ended in 2016, is the last coach to stay more than two seasons. Horn says he wants to change that.
“I don’t plan on leaving Cross Creek football unless I get fired,” Horn said. “I’m not leaving this school. I’m enjoying the building process, seeing where these guys were this time last year until now. We’ve got a lot of work to do to make this program a winner, and we’re excited about it.”
And as far as Nixon is concerned, that all begins Friday with the scrimmage against Josey.
“We’ve worked for it, we’ve earned it,” Nixon said. “Now it’s time for us to go out there and show Richmond County what we’ve got and all the work that we’ve put in from last year, to the summer time. It’s time to show what we can do.”
