By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PICAYUNE — Once again, Picayune’s Cody Stogner will get up early on the Monday of Thanksgiving week and make the short five minute drive from his home to Lee Triplett Stadium.
It will mark the ninth time in the past 14 seasons that the former standout Maroon Tide lineman has made that same trip, at first as an assistant under his mentor and Picayune coaching legend Dodd Lee and for the fourth straight year as the head coach of his alma mater.
That’s because his Maroon Tide is playing in their ninth South State championship game since 2011 as Picayune chases its third state championship in the past four seasons and its fifth in the past 13 years.

Picayune hosts undefeated Hattiesburg Friday night at 7 p.m., with a berth in the upcoming Class 6A state title tilt on the line.
“The Picayune football program has been successful for more than just 13 years, but I believe over these past 13 years the program has gone to a different level,” Stogner said, in an exclusive interview with SouthMiss6 Sports Sunday afternoon. “Where obviously your expectations are always to win at all, but whenever you have the reality of being there and doing it, you know that becomes a standard and you know the bar set high every year to reach that standard.”
Before winning the 2011 Class 5A state title, Picayune’s lone state crown up to that point came in 1986 under then head coach Calvin Triplett.
Under Lee and with Stogner standing by, the Maroon Tide then followed that state title run in 2011 up with yet another in 2013.

Picayune made it to the state championship round again in 2019 in Lee’s last year, but fell to West Point.
After starting his career as head coach in the Covid season of 2020 with a first round playoff loss, Stogner’s troops have responded with a vengeance winning the Class 5A state championship in both 2021 and 2022 and falling in the Class 6A South State title tilt to unbeaten and eventual state champ West Jones last year.
Stogner admitted that his intention upon taking over for the man that was his high school head coach was something he embraced.

“Yes, I’m forever grateful for what coach Lee has done for me and taught me,” Stogner added. “But being a competitor, I’m going to push myself and those around me to be the best we can be everyday.”
After a 63-40 win over visiting George County Friday night, a point total that tied for the second most points scored by the Maroon Tide in a state playoff game ever, over the past four seasons Stogner has guided Picayune to an almost inexplicable 50-6 record heading into this week’s match-up against the Tigers, and the Maroon Tide enters on a 10-game home playoff win streak as well.
“There’s nothing like practicing the week of Thanksgiving,” Stogner, who is 58-9 at the helm of the Maroon Tide, concluded. “I would like to think it can give us a slight edge. Our seniors know their expectations of being outside of the normal routine of a regular school schedule. I feel like the experience that our players have they know to make it bigger than it is. It’s still a 48 minute football game and we have to give great effort.”