Union County Football Preview: New Albany, Myrtle and East Union All Play at Home Friday
There are Friday nights in this county when the coffee-shop argument is about which game to drive to. This is not one of them. On Friday, Sept. 11, New Albany, Myrtle and East Union all play at home, all at 7 p.m., inside a fifteen-minute radius of one another — and all three walk onto their own grass needing something entirely different.
New Albany needs to prove the Senatobia loss was a bad hour and not a pattern. Myrtle needs to finally beat a team it has never beaten. East Union needs, more than anything, to stop the bleeding. Three home games, three separate missions, one night.
Friday’s Slate
| Game | Records | Site | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Itawamba Agricultural at New Albany | 2-0 / 1-1 | Kitchens Field | 7 p.m. |
| Belmont at Myrtle | 1-1 / 1-1 | Myrtle | 7 p.m. |
| Byers at East Union | 0-2 / 0-2 | Blue Springs | 7 p.m. |
Itawamba Agricultural (2-0) at New Albany (1-1)
A rematch of the best game either team played last year
Cody Stubblefield’s Bulldogs get the measuring stick early. Itawamba Agricultural arrives at Kitchens Field unbeaten, ranked 43rd in Mississippi by MaxPreps — 27 spots ahead of New Albany at No. 70 — and carrying the kind of program résumé that makes this a genuine test rather than a September tune-up.
It is also a rematch of a three-point classic. New Albany won 38-35 in 2025, and that result ran against a century of history. The Mississippi High School Football Historical Society credits Itawamba AHS with a 30-11 all-time edge over New Albany — a count that reaches back through the years the Fulton school competed under a different name, which it changed in 1986. Measured only by games logged under the current Itawamba AHS banner, New Albany sits at 8-18. Either way you slice it, the Bulldogs have spent most of the last hundred years chasing this opponent.
What makes Friday interesting is that both teams have shown you exactly who they are through two weeks, and the two answers do not fit together comfortably.
New Albany runs the ball, and it runs it through one man. Senior back Kylen Knox is averaging 169.0 rushing yards per game with five rushing touchdowns — every rushing score the Bulldogs have. He is also their third-leading receiver at 49.0 yards per game, which tells you how often New Albany simply finds a way to put the football in his hands. Junior quarterback Kam Ray has thrown three touchdown passes on 51.7 percent completions and added 42.0 rushing yards a game himself. Junior receiver Travon Scooter leads the team at 51.0 receiving yards per game with two scores; sophomore Ayden Burke is a shade behind at 50.5.
Itawamba AHS does not let you score. The Indians opened with a 42-10 handling of Caledonia, then went to Corinth and won a grinder 21-14. Two games, 24 points allowed. Senior middle linebacker Eli Nabors is at 10.5 tackles per game, senior Malakii Casimier at 8.5, and junior lineman CJ Ezell at 8.0 with 1.5 sacks. Senior Jamarion Gaston leads the team with two sacks.
Now the numbers that ought to worry New Albany’s sideline. Since 2000, Itawamba AHS is 73-0 when it holds an opponent under 10 points, and 142-7 when it scores 30 or more. New Albany, over the same stretch, is 97-16 when it reaches 30 and 9-90 when it surrenders 30. Senatobia got to 34 last week. That is the whole game in one sentence: if the Bulldogs cannot keep Itawamba out of the thirties, history says the rest of it will not matter.
The counter-argument is that New Albany has a pass rush. Senior end Jayden Foster has three sacks and a team-high five quarterback hurries; junior Wyatt Taylor has two more sacks. Junior linebackers William Hardy (10.5 tackles per game) and Maddox Brunet (10.0) are the two most productive defenders on the field for either side in raw tackle volume. If that front can make Itawamba one-dimensional, New Albany’s 66-0 record since 2000 when allowing fewer than 10 points becomes a live possibility rather than a trivia item.
The number that decides it: 30. New Albany is 97-16 since 2000 when it scores 30 and 9-90 when it allows 30. Friday will likely be settled by which side of that line the Bulldogs land on.
A footnote worth keeping: New Albany won a Region 1-4A championship in 2024, the program’s fourth district title and its first since 2012. The Bulldogs are 44-23 in this decade, comfortably their best ten-year stretch since the 1980s. Region play does not start until Oct. 2 against North Pontotoc, so Friday costs them nothing in the standings. It will tell them a great deal about October.
Belmont (1-1) at Myrtle (1-1)
Five tries, five losses, and one that got away by two
Every young program collects a team it cannot solve. For Myrtle, that team is Belmont.
The Hawks have played the Cardinals five times. They have lost five times. And the most recent one is the one that still stings: Belmont 30, Myrtle 28, in 2025 — a two-point margin in a season that became the best in school history, an 8-win campaign that followed the program’s first district championship in 2024.
Luke Conlee’s team arrives at 1-1 after a 28-18 opening loss to Calhoun City and a 42-6 demolition of Potts Camp. That second result matters more than the scoreline suggests, because of what Myrtle’s history says about the number 40. Since the program’s founding in 2017, the Hawks are 19-1 when they score 40 or more and 30-2 when they reach 30. They are also 0-23 when held under 10. Myrtle is not a team that grinds out 17-14 wins. It either gets rolling or it does not.
The engine is Drew Staton. The junior linebacker/athlete has scored six of Myrtle’s nine touchdowns, including three rushing and two receiving, while averaging 53.5 rushing yards a game and adding 6.0 tackles per game and a sack on defense. Junior Kyrell Pruett is actually the leading rusher at 88.5 yards per game. Sophomore quarterback Tucker Elliot has been efficient inside a limited workload: three touchdown passes, 58.8 percent completions, a 94.1 rating. Sophomore Wyatt Butler is the top target at 61.0 receiving yards per game.
Defensively, sophomore Jax Robbins has three sacks, two hurries, a forced fumble and a recovery — a genuinely disruptive two weeks. Junior Braden Russell (7.5 tackles per game) and 6-foot-2, 265-pound senior Tywon Bankhead (6.5) anchor the middle. Senior end Donovan Fuller has two sacks.
Belmont brings a workhorse and a shutout. The Cardinals lost their opener 21-16 across the state line at McNairy Central in Tennessee, then blanked Walnut 29-0 on Sept. 4 — Belmont’s first shutout since October 2024. Senior tailback Kylei Estes is the problem: 131.5 rushing yards per game, two rushing touchdowns, plus three quarterback hurries and a fumble recovery on defense. Junior Aaden Rojas adds 59.0 rushing yards a game and two scores of his own, and senior Miller Searcy contributes 40.0 rushing yards per game, a rushing touchdown, a receiving touchdown and an interception. Senior linebacker Benjamin Guin is at 12.0 tackles per game; freshman Graydon Tidwell is right behind at 10.0.
Here is the tension. Belmont wants to hand the ball to Estes and shorten the night. Myrtle, historically, is 1-33 when it allows 30 points and 19-2 when it holds an opponent under 10. The Hawks’ path is not a shootout — it is making Belmont’s ground game earn every yard and letting Staton and Pruett do the rest. Notably, Belmont has not reached 30 points in either game this season, and the Cardinals are 3-68 since 2000 when they score fewer than 10.
The number that decides it: 0-5. That is Myrtle’s all-time record against Belmont. The Hawks have never had a better roster to change it, and they have it at home.
Byers (0-2) at East Union (0-2)
The most winnable game on the Urchins’ schedule arrives at exactly the right time
Let’s be straightforward about where East Union sits. The Urchins are 0-2, have been outscored 104-21, and opened the season on the wrong end of a 42-0 shutout against Tupelo Christian Prep before losing 62-21 at Mooreville. That Aug. 28 game was the first time East Union had been shut out since November 2023. It follows a 2025 season in which the program surrendered 416 points — the most in its fifteen-year history — and lost ten games, also a program worst.
Now the other half of the story, because it matters. This is a program that won four consecutive district championships from 2018 through 2021, went 10-win in 2020, and reached a state semifinal. East Union’s all-time record is 80-77 — still above .500 across fifteen seasons. Stephen Basil is not rebuilding from nothing. He is rebuilding from a very recent peak.
And Friday is the softest landing the schedule offers. Byers, from Holly Springs, is 0-2 and has been outscored 64-18 — a 26-6 loss at Byhalia and a 38-12 loss to Holly Springs. The Lions are 61-107-1 all-time since fielding their first team in 2009, and they have never beaten East Union. The Urchins lead the series 3-0, and the last meeting, in 2016, was a 54-0 East Union win.
The historical splits point the same direction. East Union is 70-6 when it scores 30 or more and 58-1 when it reaches 40. Byers is 5-87 when it allows 30 and 1-51 when it scores fewer than 10. Both teams are 0-2. Only one of them has a track record of turning games like this into comfortable ones.
The Urchins’ production so far has come from underclassmen. Sophomore back Tavoras Polk leads the team at 26.0 rushing yards per game; sophomore athlete Jon Carter Goodwin adds 14.0 on the ground and 6.0 tackles per game, and has taken snaps at quarterback alongside junior starter Maddox Treadaway. Senior Keiston Walker is the leading receiver at 10.0 yards per game. Junior Colten Goad leads the defense with 9.0 tackles per game, with sophomore Rylei Lester at 8.0.
Those are not intimidating numbers, and that is precisely the point of Friday. East Union has not had a game yet in which it could establish anything. Against a Byers team that has allowed 32 points a night and scored nine, the Urchins have a real chance to run the football, play from ahead and find out who they are before Region 2-2A opens Oct. 2 — against Myrtle, in Blue Springs.
The number that decides it: 22-0. That is East Union’s all-time record when it holds an opponent under 10 points. Byers has been held under 13 in both of its games.
By the Numbers
| Team | Record | PF | PA | Head Coach | MaxPreps MS Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Albany | 1-1 | 61 | 41 | Cody Stubblefield | 70 |
| Myrtle | 1-1 | 60 | 34 | Luke Conlee | 145 |
| East Union | 0-2 | 21 | 104 | Stephen Basil | 264 |
Season results so far
- New Albany: W 34-7 at Saltillo (Aug. 28) · L 27-34 vs. Senatobia (Sept. 4)
- Myrtle: L 18-28 vs. Calhoun City (Aug. 28) · W 42-6 vs. Potts Camp (Sept. 3)
- East Union: L 0-42 vs. Tupelo Christian Prep (Aug. 28) · L 21-62 at Mooreville (Sept. 4)
The Last Word
Three weeks from now, none of these results will show up in a region standing. Every one of Friday’s games is non-division. That is exactly why they are useful.
New Albany finds out whether it can live with a top-50 team before Region 1-4A gets serious. Myrtle gets a chance to erase the one line on its record that has never changed. East Union gets the first honest opportunity of its season to play a full four quarters with the game still in reach. And on Oct. 2, Myrtle and East Union will settle a county argument of their own in Blue Springs.
Kickoff is 7 p.m. everywhere. Pick a gate.
Records, rosters and individual statistics via MaxPreps. Historical records, all-time series data and situational splits via the Mississippi High School Football Historical Society at AHSFHS.org. Individual statistics reflect figures reported to MaxPreps by member schools and are current as of each team’s most recent update.