Pair of Stone brothers are leading the Tomcats on and off the field
The Tomcats were staring down an uphill battle heading into the season.
A year removed from sneaking into the playoffs with a 2-4 regular season record, depth was lacking on Stone’s varsity football team and still is.
Now, five weeks into the season, Stone is already surpassing expectations as it barrels into district play. The team is 2-2 with close losses to St. Martin and Biloxi, two 6A programs with rosters nearly double the size of the Tomcats’.
Coach John Feaster’s team followed those losses up with a dominant 56-6 win over Larry Dolan’s Forrest County AHS squad and a 43-6 plastering of South Pike.
Stone’s secret to overachieving? A pair of brothers playing for each other, their team, their family and their late father.
“They’re major contributors and a major part of what we try to do as a team,” Feaster said of Chasden and Daylon Collins, who are gaining 217 combined all-purpose yards per game.
Chasden, a senior, is leading the team on the field with 280 receiving yards and off of it as a “silent leader,” according to Feaster.
“Chas” has been a contributor since his freshman year of high school and has accounted for over 1,000 receiving yards in his career.
“Chas leads by example,” Feaster said. “He doesn’t talk much, but he does everything you ask him to do. He’s one of the best good players I’ve ever been around.”
Daylon, a junior, emerged last season at running back and is pacing the team this year with 483 rushing yards and four touchdowns.
The two have played in 11 football games since the tragic loss of their father in a car accident during the summer of 2021 and, according to Feaster, are honoring him and their family with their play.
“He’s always on my mind, he never leaves,” Chas said. “It motivates me, me and my brothers.”
“Growing up, he always coached us,” Daylon said. “Showing us things, the rules, everything about football. Even baseball. He was just always there.”
There’s a third Collins brother on the team, Jayden, who is a freshman that has made a couple of appearances this year.
The three are a part of what Feaster says is a great family, one that has bred the bunch as “silently competitive” and always fighting for each other.
“They don’t talk a lot,” Feaster said. “But they do compete. One tries to outdo the other one, just a little sibling rivalry.”
The rivalry spills over in a positive way for the Tomcats on the field. Daylon and Chas are the skillful focal points of an offense led by quarterback Connor Tice and are constantly trying to one-up each other.
“We’re very competitive,” Chas said. “When one of us makes a big play, we’ll go tell the other one ‘I could do better.’”
According to Daylon, the dynamic only helps the team move the football with success.
“I’m always trying to do better than (Chas) so I can mess with him after the game,” Daylon said. “I think (the team) kind of feeds off of us and we definitely couldn’t do it without them.”
Feaster says the youngest, Jayden, is also a “heck of an athlete” and is leading a swell of 35 freshman that will take over the varsity squad before too long.
As for right now, the Tomcats hope to continue to ride the sibling rivalry to district success the rest of the season. The region is more wide open now than it has been in years with the Moss Point Tigers, who are on a 10-game district win streak, currently sitting at 0-5.
“We up right now,” Daylon said. “But we’re trying to stay humble and keep it going into district play. We’re trying to win district this year.”
“We’re feeling really good,” Chas said. “The two losses, I think we needed those to kind of help us get together as a team and work on what we needed to work on.”
Four ultra-imperative games remain on Stone’s regular season slate. Four opportunities for the program to win its first district title since 1994 and four more chances for the brother’s competitive streaks to flourish.
And if you’re wondering which one is the better athlete, Daylon can clear that up for you: “I’m always going to say me, nobody can tell me different.”
