Star RB delivers Week 1 statement heard across South MS in win over state champ
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- West Harrison defeated reigning champion Poplarville 34-18 behind Jordan Stapleton.
- Stapleton scored four touchdowns and showcased power against a top-ranked defense.
- Hurricanes executed a crucial fourth-quarter drive to seal their first road opener win since 2018.
Jordan Stapleton and the West Harrison Hurricanes played spoiler Friday, taking down reigning 4A state champion Poplarville in the Hornets’ house, 34-18.
In a dual between high-profile running backs Stapleton and Poplarville four-star prospect Ty Keys, it was the former who ran roughshod through a vaunted and physical Hornets defense. Stapleton found the end zone four times in the wire-to-wire win, beginning with a 37-yard touchdown catch on the opening drive.
It was his second touchdown that charged the air in Popvegas. The senior took a sweep right and quickly sent 300-pound lineman Jobe Lambert into the ground with a stiff arm before cutting up field. He then spun through three defenders: one on his hip, one on his legs and one to the chest. He left all three behind and threw away another would-be tackler with a stiff-arm before winning the race down the sideline.
Five broken tackles for 39 yards and six points.
“I’m running to win,” Stapleton said after the game. “I know we haven’t gotten over that playoff hump. These are my brothers, I could’ve transferred, but I wanted to stay here and win. So I’m coming with everything. I’m leaving everything I got out on the field.”
West Harrison has yet to play a postseason game in its 16-year history. It’s a fact that has loomed over the program during a stretch of three consecutive seasons where it has come up one game shy of the breakthrough.
Taking down a team with 35 playoff wins since the opening of West Harrison High School wasn’t a milestone moment for the Hurricanes, though, but instead a rain-wrapped message delivered through every blow Stapleton and a physical defense dished out.
“We had to show everybody that West Harrison ain’t no slack,” Stapleton said. “We’re coming week in and week out.”
Keys was a handful out of the Poplarville backfield, and fellow class of 2027 blue chip prospect Sam LeJeune was a constant force from the interior of the defensive line.
All three of the Hornets’ touchdowns were scored by Keys. LeJeune and Lambert nearly combined for double-digit tackles for loss. But Keys rarely broke through the second level of a West Harrison defense that stars its own Saturday talents in Navy commits Jazear Carter and Tre Williams.
LeJeune and Lambert’s combined 580 pounds were mitigated through misdirection and unpredictable guerrilla force from an experienced offensive line.
“Austin Holley, our offensive coordinator, he came in June and July, and he put this game plan together,” West Harrison head coach Quincy Patrick said. “And our O-line doesn’t get enough credit because those guys work their butt off, and they’re good, young men who give everything they got all the time.”
Patrick saw the game as a good opportunity to prepare his team for coming battles in West Harrison’s new R4-7A home.
It also put his team in a familiar, pivotal moment. All momentum the Hurricanes had gathered in building a 28-12 second-half lead came to a stop in the third quarter when a lost fumble deep in their own territory set up a 15-yard touchdown jaunt from Keys.
The sequence pulled the Hornets within 10 points and breathed new life into the sideline. It also put West Harrison in the same position it had faltered in during key games over the past couple of years, including one-score district losses to Hancock and Pascagoula last fall.
The Hurricanes responded to the moment with a seven-minute drive culminating in a 4th-and-goal touchdown run by Sean Fairley, putting Poplarville down three scores with just minutes remaining.
“We have to finish ballgames,” Patrick said. “We’re going to face adversity. How do we handle adversity? This is what we needed. We needed to face adversity against a good ball club.”
It helps to have a 2,000-yard rusher storming out of the flexbone in a linebacker’s No. 45 jersey. A running back Patrick finds few others in the same tier as.
“He’s a top-three running back in the state.”
It was West Harrison’s first season-opening win on the road since scraping by Bay High, 22-21, in Patrick’s first game at the helm in 2018.
The Hurricanes stay on the road next week with a game at Forrest in search of the team’s first 2-0 start since 2022.
For Poplarville, it was the seventh time in the last eight years the Hornets dropped the first game of the season. Jay Beech’s squad will be on the road the next three weeks, beginning with a trip to Stone.
This story was originally published August 30, 2025 at 6:02 AM.
