According to Rotarian of the Day and guest speaker at the Winnfield Rotary meeting on April 23, the 2011 Winnfield Tigers football team was the best ever to play for Winnfield Senior High School. As you might guess, the speaker, Thomas Little, was a member of the team which played in the State Finals in the Superdome, and was the first team to compete in the finals since the 1982 Tigers won the state championship.
Little said the team’s road to success in 2011 began in middle school when Brian Savell taught him and his teammates the fundamentals of football, along with discipline, a serious work ethic and good sportsmanship. Indeed, the Winnfield Middle School’s 8th grade team was undefeated in 2007.
Four years later, in the senior year of those same players, the high school was undefeated until the state championship game against John Curtis Christian School in New Orleans, a private school which has won the most LHSAA state championships in Louisiana football history.
Little attributed much of the team’s success to head coach Andy Pyles, who was energetic, encouraging, and had high expectations of every player. “He loved on all the boys on the team, from all different backgrounds,” says Little, and had a gift for motivating each team member in whatever way that boy needed. Of course, Coach Pyles had an outstanding and talented staff as well.
Keys to the team’s success were the outstanding talent of all 22 of the first-string players, which allowed the second string to get almost as much time on the field as the first string. In addition to a high scoring offense which put no fewer than 24 points on the scoreboard against every team except John Curtis, the defense caused many turnovers and held most of the opposing teams to 20 points or less except in the quarter finals against Episcopal and the final.
Losing the final game John Curtis in the Superdome was a heartbreaker for the team, but not a surprise considering John Curtis’s record of 28 state championships. The Tigers finished the season 14-1, with the most all-state players ever from a Winnfield team—five on the first all-state team and three with honorable mentions.
From a school the size of Winnfield, an amazing fourteen players on the 2011 team went on to play college football, with a few going on to the NFL. Anyone care to challenge the assessment of the 2011 WSHS Tiger football team as the best ever?