News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days: St. Patrick Fighting Irish

BILOXI, Miss. (WXXV) — It’s all about journey over destination at St. Patrick Catholic High School, where the Fighting Irish break in a whole new attitude with their new head coach Oscar Glasscock.

“Well, the biggest thing we have to focus on is doing our job and not being distracted by things from the past here or how last season went or how the last game went or how the last play went,” said Glasscock. “But we’ve got to be focused on what our job is right at that moment.”

“On a football team you have 11 positions, and if you do your job, you fill that 1/11th, and if everybody corresponds with their job, you get a whole team there, and once you get a whole team, there’s no stopping,” said St. Patrick senior offensive tackle/defensive end Jayden Cecil.

‘Do Your Job’ are the new words to live by under Glasscock (also known as Coach OG), stepping in for now assistant principal Trey Bailey, who had a huge hand in getting the program to where it is today, having just graduated the winningest four-year varsity seniors in school history.

“He did a great job of getting the numbers up and kind of getting the program going in the right direction, and what I’ve been tasked to do is to try to help make that next step,” said Glasscock.

“We’re kind of at a Stage 1 now,” said Cecil. “Coach Bailey brought it all the way up, and we had the best season in St. Patrick’s history. We scored the most points and all that, set a bunch of milestones and now we’re in sort of a rebuilding phase. But me and all the guys back there that are seniors want to set a tone and set a base for St. Patrick to only go up from here.”

The Fighting Irish are actually coming off their first winning season since 2008, having also scored the most points since ’08.

It’s worth noting they went independent for the 2022 campaign only, finishing with an overall record of 6-2, despite getting shutout by Resurrection Catholic in Week 1.

“After that game, something seemed to click with our team, and it was just wide open from there,” said St. Patrick senior running back/middle linebacker Cooper Mercier.

In their six wins, the Irish outscored the opposition by an average of four touchdowns per game, pitching three shutouts in the process.

St. Patrick returns to the Region 8-3A ranks in 2023 with eight seniors leading the way.

“I understand where these guys are at the end of their career, you have change happen, and I want to make sure that they’re the focus of the program – not that we’re going to be on some youth movement – but that they’re important,” said Glasscock.

“We’re definitely talking about laying down the stepping stones for the underclassmen, and just making sure that we really show them, if you work hard you can have great success, even if the odds are against you,” said Mercier.

Coach OG is trying to stack the deck in favor of the Irish, using his 30-year wealth of experience in the Alabama public school system – most recently at 6A Cullman – to change the mindset of what it means to play football at St. Patrick.

“Within this month, I mean Coach OG has just done great things,” said Cecil. “He’s established a certain attitude that we should have.”

“If you don’t want to hit, you don’t need to play football, and that got to me,” said Mercier. “I was like, man, I want to hit, and so he tells us every day. He’s like – we do the board drill – he’s like, if you do not get on the boards and go 100 percent and hit, you’re not going to play.”

“When you dwell on the past it leads to depression, and you can’t be thinking about the future, the next play of the next five plays or the next five years of your life because that leads to anxiety. God wants us to live in the moment, and when you’re doing your job and when you’re focusing on what you’re supposed to do at that moment, that’s where God wants us to be,” said Glasscock.

In Week 1, John D’Angelo will be serving as the new starting quarterback of an entirely new offense, to compliment a defense with plenty of swagger.

“As we like to say, we’ve got a bunch of dogs on the defense,” said Cecil. “I mean John Hay is a dog. Breton Descher is a dog. We’ve got a bunch of guys back there. Even Ayden Le, he’s a dog.”

What St. Patrick does this season will have a ripple effect for years to come, and regardless of the win-loss column, Coach OG is preaching process over end product.

“It would mean a lot to see all that hard work mean something,” said Mercier.

“Being in the moment is just taking it day by day, getting better every single day and really just pulling from there, and once we think the time is right, we’re going to play the game,” said Cecil “We’re going to get it in. We’re going to get some W’s.”

“It’s got to be that grind from the summer, preseason, every day that you embrace and understand that’s the journey,” said Glasscock. “It’s like the Pacific salmon. The Pacific salmon spends its entire life traveling upstream to spawn and then they die, so the destination is not really that great. It’s that journey to get to that destination is what it’s all about, and so I’m trying to help them kind of understand that.”

St. Patrick travels to Sacred Heart in Hattiesburg in Week 1 for a 7 p.m. kickoff on Friday.